Schema Markup Optimization Increases Featured Snippet Job Applications by 190%

The Story

We began an SEO engagement with UVA Health Careers, a subsidiary of UVA Health whose primary focus is to hire top-of-the-line team members. Over the last several years, the healthcare industry has become increasingly competitive from a hiring and retention perspective. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted challenges in hiring and retaining talent in the industry. According to Becker’s Hospital Review, the industry lost 1.6 million jobs between February and April of 2020, yet healthcare jobs have grown 6.1% between 2020 and 2024. There has been a shift in the delivery of healthcare services since the pandemic, with more services being offered outside of a traditional hospital setting. Diversifying healthcare services and a larger volume of job listings make it a competitive industry to hire for.

On top of being in a competitive industry during a time of change in a post-pandemic world, UVA Health Careers is faced with a unique challenge. They must strike a delicate balance between recruiting top-tier talent to ensure excellence in care and research while upholding academic values that prioritize education, innovation, and the ethical development of future professionals. This, on top of fighting for visibility against other UVA Health subdomains, means that not only are they competing against other well-known institutions in the industry, but they are also competing against themselves. The primary goal of our engagement with UVA Health Careers was to increase job application submissions.

Our team kicked off the SEO engagement with a comprehensive technical site audit. We tackled a broad spectrum of issues across 11 categories, analyzing them through both foundational and advanced lenses. The goal was to uncover technical opportunities to optimize search engine performance while identifying content enhancements to better serve users. One often-overlooked category proved exceptionally impactful: structured data.

The Challenge

During our site audit, we examined the structured data template applied to all job listings on the site. The challenge? While some structured data tools were flagged in Google Search Console for formatting issues, others did not, leaving the problem's scope unclear. This prompted our team to dig deeper into the template’s format to identify a definitive solution.

Google has signaled in recent years that structured data plays a significant role in determining what gets rendered in search results. Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) have continued to become more personalized and enhance user experience as we approach what experts deem a ‘zero-click era’ for organic search. Complicating matters further, John Mueller from Google has confirmed that structured data is not a direct ranking factor, but does help search engines understand what the webpage or website is about. This leads us to our biggest challenge: If this is not a direct ranking factor and there is a highly competitive landscape, is the juice worth the squeeze by updating the structured data template?

The Approach

Ultimately, our team recommended a straightforward adjustment to the structured data template: changing 'United States of America' to 'US' in the schema markup. Initially, the country was listed as 'United States of America' to align with billing conventions. However, this conflicted with the recommended formatting for healthcare schema based on SEO best practices. This small but critical change ensured compliance with the proper schema guidelines.

The Results

The impact of our efforts was clear and measurable, with significant improvements across key performance indicators. Here are some highlights:

• Application Growth via Google Jobs Apply: Applications tracked through the Google Jobs Apply SERP feature improved by 190%, growing from 6,388 to 18,503 between May and October 2024.

• Enhanced Visibility in Job Featured Snippets: The site’s visibility in Job Featured Snippets increased by 197%, rising from 674 to 2,001 instances.

• Exceeded KPI Targets: We surpassed our goal of a 7% quarter-over-quarter growth in organic job applications—outpacing paid media leads—and highlighting the effectiveness of our SEO-driven strategy.