Maximizing your organic search traffic is one of the most important areas for ensuring your site is a success. You may feel as though you've already captured all the traffic you possibly can, but there's always untapped traffic to target. Content is increasingly being viewed as the key element in driving traffic online, so just imagine the benefits of search engines aggregating rich information about your content to search results. It sounds quite appealing, but also rather complex. However, what if this led to your organic search traffic increased by 30%? And what if all you had to do was implement a small change to your site's code?

Well, this code does exist, it's called "structured markup," and surprisingly few websites have adopted it so far. Schema.org, the most popular type of structured markup, allows publishers to tag various database-driven content elements so that Yahoo, Bing and Google will recognize the significance of this content and display it accordingly. Schema is what powers "rich snippets," those non-textual parts of Google's search results that show product prices, publication dates, star ratings and even thumbnail images; at the same time Schema also offers the possibility of superior search visibility for those who adopt the standard. Schema.org is the site that provides a collection of schemas that webmasters can use to markup HTML pages in ways recognized by major search providers, and that can also be used for structured data interoperability. Search engines including Bing, Google, Yahoo! and Yandex rely on this markup to improve the display of search results, making it easier for people to find the right Web pages.

One estimate from a few years back indicated that sites using Schema receive 30% more clickthroughs from Google than those without. And yet only 20% of websites have Schema markup in their code, according to stats touted by the Schema commission's leadership.