Structured Data: What is it and what is its relevance?

It is on page markup that enables search engines to better understand the information that is coded on your website. Structured data is highly structured and predictable, which is why it is easy for search engines to read and recognise. It is the high level of organisation that makes it easy to determine contact details such as name, address and place, as well as articles, events, products and recipes. 

Structured Data: What is it and what is its relevance?

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Structured data markup is a text-based organisation of text that typically follows the vocabulary of schema.org. Schema.org is an open collaborative community with a mission to create and maintain schemas for structured data on the internet. It is most easily represented using JSON-LD format which stands for JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data.

When structured data is implemented, you give that content the opportunity to appear in rich data in two Google results categories.

  • Rich results
  • Knowledge graph cards 

Rich results or rich cards are for structured data of things like recipes, articles and videos. This could appear as an individual item or a list of items. Structuring your data and giving your content the opportunity to appear in these rich cards is beneficial to you from an SEO standpoint because

  • The links that appear in rich cards stand out more from other search results and appear to be more trustworthy- generally because they are.
  • This can be really important in particular, for example, when promoting an event. If someone does a quick search of the event, it will be easy to find a link to purchase tickets or find the venue if the event title is bolded in a rich card.

Knowledge graph cards offer more detail than rich cards. If you’re the authority for content of any kind, Google can treat your content as fact and use it to give definitive answers in the form of knowledge graph cards. For example, if you were to search ‘Members of The Beatles’, Knowledge Graph Cards appear for each member. To take this even further, a search may simply be ‘The Beatles.’ The knowledge graph would then give extensive information including a short bio, band members, popular songs, albums and their social media profiles.

This is all very interesting stuff and the fact Google is able to grab all of this information is really cool. But how is having structured data going to help you?

For retail businesses, structured data is important for products that you are selling. When a product is placed on a website, a description is generally given about the product and their may be options for sizes and colours. These products can be given a rich card and this could lead to a sale from a single Google search.

Structured data is also for finding businesses locations, phone numbers, websites and social media pages. A search of ‘Stead Lane’ for example, displays a knowledge graph card which includes the address, phone number, opening hours, website and reviews.

Structured data is basically making it as easy as possible for search engines to find the important bits of data so they can make it easier for your audience to find.

It then allows the audience to find what it is they are really looking for more efficiently. To be better recognised by Google, implementing structured data is a really smart first move. Structured data is generally implemented using html code so having a web developer implement it is the most efficient way of doing it. Otherwise, with a shopify site, you can purchase a ‘structured data’ add on and all the work is done for you.

Need a hand? Contact us and we can structure everything for you!

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