Yoast Vs Schema Plugin by Hesham

Hi Sanjay,

Ok, so the Schema plugin adds implementation for schema.org markup, which tells search engines (like Google) more details about the structure and content of your website, which can improve your site performance in terms of findability.

In other words, implementing schema.org markup allow search engines to understand your website structure and content in a better way.

1- Yoast SEO allow you to add meta tags, and other useful elements to your site, which improve its performance in search and make search engines love your site.

2- Schema plugin allow you to add markup to your content and pages, also other useful features. So, why not improve your site more?

Check this out: I’ve just published a blog post (Yoast SEO VS Schema) to explain the main differences between both plugins as I see it, and how actually using both plugins can improve your site.

Thanks Hesham for your prompt reply & blog post. Appreciate it.

My confusion stems from the fact that Yoast WordPress Plugin also adds Schemas https://yoast.com/structured-data-schema-ultimate-guide/

I see an overlap.

Could you pls elaborate a bit more on what your plugin does which Yoast does not. I’m sure this will help a lot of other WP users (including me).

Thanks!

Sure, so the main big difference is that Schema plugin adds markup to your “content” (example “Article“), Yoast SEO plugin doesn’t do that, it does a totally different thing, which is marking up your “Site” (example: WebSite).

So, to understand exactly what I mean, there is nothing better than comparing the actual json-ld output of each plugin.

I recommend doing a quick Structured Data test to compare a page on Yoast’s website, and another from schema.press website. You will figure it out!

Here is some quick test links, from schema.press you can check something like this BlogPosting from the blog, or that TechArticle from the documentation section.

Hi Hesham,

First off, thanks for the detailed reply. Its getting interesting!!

Basis your email, I did some tests on my website’s web page.
The output are as below.

With Schema Plugin: https://prntscr.com/gygd6f
With Yoast Plugin: https://prntscr.com/gygdnt

My observations & Questions:
—————————-
Markups created by Yoast:”hentry”, “Organization” & “WebSite”
Markups created by Schema: “hentry”, “BreadcrumbList” & “Article”.

Under “Schema” > Settings > Knowledge Graph > I have unchecked the “Use Yoast SEO markup?”

Now my question is, shouldn’t Schema also create “Organization” & “WebSite” markups along with “BreadcrumbList” & “Article”.

The web page (not blog post) in consideration is https://www.31west.net/cco/

In the example you shared above, I see a lot more markups than what I get on my page (just 3). I’m guessing, more the markups, better it is for google ranking. I can I get more markup elements?

Can you pls also explain “…setting Featured image while you create or edit the post.”
I’m setting Featured images for all my blog posts. I’m unsure what I should do for the above option & what to expect out of it.

I see an error about IMAGE in my markup. Can you pls help me understand what it is and how can I fix it.

Seems like Youtube Videos on my site are not being captured in the schema. Do I need to do anything to include videos in the markups?

Thanks again!

Best regards,
Sanjay

Let me go though points you’ve mentioned above:

1 – The hentry isn’t created by Yoast SEO, neither Schema. This is mostly is coming from the Theme you are using, and it’s good if done properly. The main issue here is that some Theme authors do not push enough updates for their themes, so.. users end up with errors.

Possible Solutions

• Contact theme author and ask them to fix it. Actually, ask them to provide a way to override this output, we don’t want to modify the theme code!)
• Try to fix it yourself.
• Switch to a better Theme.
• Live with it, the world isn’t depending on your website!

The bottom line is, you can have more than one type of markup if you would like to, this because search engines used to pick and recognize different types, so we needed to support multiple types on the site.

This isn’t the case today; now we have schema.org, a vocabulary which major search engines put an effort to recognize.

2- Shouldn’t Schema also create “Organization” & “WebSite” markups along with “BreadcrumbList” & “Article”?

Yes, absolutely! Schema actually does that (it has support for Organization and WebSite, you need to check and configure the plugin settings. (This happen on the front page or home page only though!)

3- The additional markup you see at schema.org site is mostly generated by Genesis theme, example: WPHeader, SiteNavigationElement, WPSideBar…etc. I am certainly looking into implementing this in the Schema core plugin whenever is possible.

4- Featured Image settings: This feature was meant to set the Featured Image for you automatically if you’ve uploaded any to the post Editor, practically it looks for Children Attachments with post_mime_type image.

P.S. I’ve just tested this functionality now, and it seems to be not working as expected. Anyways, it’s like a reminder feature, but since it fail in some cases I will be looking to remove it from the core plugin at anytime, I got the idea from plugins like WP Autoset Featured Image Plus, so when this feature is removed you can use that plugin instead.

5- The Image error in Structured Data Test Tool is explained in the FAQ section, under Structured Data Errors.

This error is common, it happened when Google decided that every Article should have an image, so they started to show an error for that in the Testing tool to let us know this is required.

Possible fixes:

• Edit your Articles that has no images and make sure they do have a Featured Image.
• Leave this to Schema, the plugin do a few tries to solve the image issue by pulling one from the content of your post. If all ways failed, then there is no choice by to add it manually.
• Based on requests, I was able to put together a simple free extension called Schema Default Image, the name says it all. However, this is not the best way to go with it. I believe each Article should have a relevant unique image that is relevant.

6- For Videos, you have to embed videos in the Editor. I’ve tested this and it gets the video thumb correctly, but it fail on some services to pull all necessary data. I don’t really remember which ones.

I hope this explains the missing parts ??

I think I understand all you’ve said Hesham but I’m confused by this message in Schema because it seems Yoast and Schema are conflicting:

By default, Schema plugin will override Yoast SEO output. Check this box if you would like to disable Schema markup and use Yoast SEO output instead. (This will be enabled on Search Results feature as well)

There is no conflict, this message means exactly whatvit says.

When you active Schema plugin, it will take over the markup, if you want to keep using what Yoast SEO plugin outputs, then you need to enabled this option.

I hope this makes sense.