You’ve probably heard of how structured data is important. It helps search engines understand information about every web page on your website. The value of structured data is well-defined.
In this guide, you will find out everything you need to know about structured data.
Let’s cut to the chase!
Structured Data and SEO
No matter what you have planned in your project roadmap, structured data can’t help your SEO directly. Despite this fact, there are a few benefits you’ll get from this. Let’s review some of them:
- Support E-A-T and semantic search
The role of semantic search is to find meaning behind the queries people type in Google. It is not about an ordinary keyword matching scheme. For instance, when you’re trying to find an employee handbook creator Google suggests not just services but guides on how to handle this process as well.
Semantic search is more about something in-depth that Google tries to suggest to you by analyzing your inquiry.
You already know that structured data helps Google understand the information on the page. Therefore, it will suggest the most accurate results for users.
Did you know that Google explores three elements on each page of the website?
These elements are – expertise, authoritativeness, and trust. All three elements create a concept called “E-A-T.” And Google tries to find it on every page of the website. Likely, structured data can help Google with this via the information available on the site. The authors’ names, an outline of the post, and the rest attributes of the content tell Google what this page is all about.
- Structured data helps get rich results
There is no room for doubt that you are aware of what rich results are. They are notable mostly for rich snippets.
This additional information can help your page get more clicks.
- Get to Knowledge Graph
The knowledge graph is a semantic network. It represents a collection of interlinked descriptions of entities that are connected. Thus, your brand, brand voice, brand logo, products – all these elements can become entities established by structured data.
You’ve noticed the knowledge graph results in the SERP for various queries.
The knowledge graph can give you more authority and brand visibility.
There are more other benefits that your SEO can have with the help of structured data.
The next step is to see the role of schema markup concerning structured data.
Schema Markup and Structured Data
Schema markup is an excellent way to help structure data on the web. In other words, schema markup creates a format that tells Google what piece of information it observes.
To get you a clear and simple idea of how it works, review the following example.
For instance, you want to tell Google that your surname is Black. Your task is to let them understand that this is your surname, not a color. For this, use schema.org vocabulary and search for the “surname” term.
You’ll get a property called “familyName”:
Your task is to use this form in your code following a suggested property. Don’t try applying other variations that may come to your mind. They won’t work anyway.
Now, let’s see how you can structure your data.
How You Can Structure Data
To structure data you can use three main formats – RDFa, Microdata, and JSON-LD. These formats have specifications that you need to know. Let’s review them one by one:
-
JSON-LD
This format Google recommends using the most. Besides, it is the easiest format to implement. It doesn’t require “tag” HTML elements (like you need to do for other structured data formats.)
JSON-LD works as one piece of code that provides Google with the entire information on the page. You can place the script of this format anywhere in the <head> or <body> of your HTML.
-
Microdata
This format is opposite to JSON-LD. As it is spread across the page to markup content right off the bat.
-
RDFa
It resembles the Microdata format and it is rarely used in practice.
How to test structured data?
You won’t find a developer who would use code without testing it beforehand. It is necessary to know that it has no drawbacks. Hence, Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool will help you with this. Everything you need to do is put a code snippet or URL to this tool and analyze it.
If you detected some errors in the code, you must fix them and repeat the process. Afterwards, you can proceed with creating content.
Structured Data Outside Your Website
It is not always necessary to use schema markup to get your product or brand featured in the Knowledge Graph.
Why?
Just because your brand can be quite popular and there are many mentions of it everywhere on the web.
If your first thought was “I need a Wikipedia page to get a mention in the Knowledge Panels” – you are wrong.
There are three reasons for this:
- Google takes different trusted sources to provide users with the most related results per inquiry
- It is challenging to get to a Wikipedia (it isn’t worth your time)
- Google states the source of description mainly (Knowledge Panels don’t have it at all)
The trick is simple here. You need to unite the information about your brand and business in one scheme.
Lastly, share all the information about your company across major social media channels. Reach out to authoritative sites within the niche and get featured there. Finally, build a chain of connections using a “sameAs” property. And voila!
To Conclude
Structured data has its power. For sure. But it shouldn’t be a top SEO priority for your website. It is just a tiny part of the overall SEO strategy.
Of course, if you want to make your SEO a hundred percent comprehensive, you should work with structured data. However, it is not as crucial as it seems.
If you think this post lacks more information about structured data, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
