Structured Data and Website SEO

For now, the Google search engine remains the primary source of information. Every day, millions of people type their queries into the search bar, looking for advice, products, or services. Meanwhile, website and online store owners strive at all costs to rank as high as possible for the keywords that matter to them. Competition increases every year, making it harder and harder to achieve those coveted rankings. It also does not help that Google constantly changes the appearance of search results. Additional features or an increased number of ads at the top of the page mean that - in addition to website SEO - you must also take care of the appearance of the search result itself. You can achieve such visibility by adding structured data to your website.

What is structured data?

Structured data is specialized code placed on a website that makes it easier for computer programs, such as search engines, to process and interpret its content. Thanks to it, website content is communicated in a more organized and understandable way for web crawlers, which can result in additional information being displayed in Google search results. You might also encounter other terms used to describe structured data - organized data, schema, or schema markup. To better illustrate what structured data is, imagine running a blog with book reviews. On your site, you have the following excerpt:

"Dune" is a timeless novel by Frank Herbert that has won millions of fans worldwide. The book has 704 pages and was published by the Rebis publishing house. It is available in a hardcover edition, making it an excellent choice for both literature enthusiasts and collectors. It is a must-read for anyone looking to dive into the rich world of Arrakis - full of intrigue, politics, and religious fanaticism.

For a human, such a description poses no problem - in just a few moments, they will grasp the key information, such as the author, page count, book title, publisher, or cover type. However, algorithms analyzing websites may struggle to interpret such data. Therefore, presenting this information in the form of structured data will make it easier for the search engine to understand the site's content. The simplest way to organize information is to add a table where the first column contains property names, such as "author" or "page count", and the second contains the corresponding values. Such a layout not only helps algorithms read the data, but also improves readability for users.

A more difficult, but more effective method is to add the previously mentioned structured data in the form of dedicated code.

Why use structured data on a website?

The main purpose of adding structured data is to help search engine crawlers properly interpret a page's content. This allows them to better understand what a given website is about and categorize it correctly. Information conveyed through structured data can also be used by algorithms to display additional details next to the search result (known as Rich Snippets), enhancing its appeal to the user. This, in turn, can lead to a higher click-through rate (CTR), which positively impacts website traffic. Although structured data has no direct impact on rankings, stronger signals, such as more clicks on a link featuring rich results, indicate to Google that the page is valuable to users.

How to create structured data?

Now that you know the benefits of implementing structured data on a website, it is time to move on to more practical matters.

1. Choose a structured data format

Currently, Google reads structured data in three formats: JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa. They differ in syntax and how they are implemented within the page code. Microdata and RDFa are tightly integrated with HTML code, whereas JSON-LD structured data can be added anywhere on the page - at the beginning, middle, or end. What is more, JSON-LD does not need to be tied to any HTML tag, which makes it a more flexible solution. Google's documentation also notes that JSON-LD is the preferred format for structured data. The choice among these three formats should also depend on the technical capabilities of the website and the preferences of the developer responsible for its development.

2. Determine which types of structured data you want to add to your website

For structured data to effectively support communication between your website and the search engine, you must use proper property names and the appropriate value format. The best source of information is Schema.org - a structured data vocabulary developed by the world's largest search engines. It currently contains 811 types and 1,485 properties. That is quite a lot, but to keep things simple, it is worth checking Google's official guide to structured data features, available at: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/search-gallery. In the guide, you will find all the data types supported by the Google search engine, though some of them may not be available in our region. If you run a business website in question, I especially recommend paying attention to the following structured data:

• Article, NewsArticle, BlogPosting - for tagging blog and news articles,
• BreadcrumbList - for tagging breadcrumb navigation,
• LocalBusiness or Organization - depending on the scale of your business,
• ProfilePage - if you want to promote content creators on the site,
• AggregateRating - for displaying aggregate ratings.

In the case of online stores, the main type of structured data should be Product data. It is through this that e-commerce sites can - directly within the Google search results - present information regarding price, product availability, or user reviews.

3. Prepare the structured data

You can create structured data manually, following the guidelines on schema.org or Google's feature guide, or use a handy generator (I personally use technicalseo.com, which, by the way, includes other useful SEO tools). Various types of CMS extensions and plugins, such as YoastSEO for WordPress, can also be helpful. They are easy to use for people without advanced technical knowledge. However, keep in mind that such solutions often limit the ability to use unusual properties. In that case, developer support will come in handy.

4. Test the prepared structured data

Once you have created the appropriate structured data, it is time to check its correctness. Two main tools are used for this. The Schema Markup Validator (https://validator.schema.org/) is the official tool that lets you check every type and property described in the schema.org dictionary. Simply provide the page URL or paste a code snippet. After a moment, the detected structured data will appear on the right side, along with information on whether it contains any errors or warnings.

The second tool is the Rich Results Test (https://search.google.com/test/rich-results). It allows you to check whether the structured data you created can be properly read by Google. This tool only checks formats supported by Google - namely, those listed in the previously mentioned feature guide.

5. Add structured data to the site

The next step is to add structured data to your website. If you used plugins and extensions in the previous step, your schema implementation is already complete. In other cases, it will need to be added to the site's code. The implementation method itself also depends on the chosen format. Data in JSON-LD format is the most flexible - it can be added anywhere on the page, such as in the header, body, or footer. Google will easily find it and interpret it correctly. With microformats and RDFa, however, integration directly into the page's HTML code is necessary, which requires modifying the template. In such cases, the help of someone with development experience may be essential to implement the data correctly and avoid errors.

6. Verify the correctness of the structured data implementation

Implementing structured data does not conclude your task yet. Even if it was done by someone with development experience and the code you prepared was ideal, it is worth testing whether any unforeseen errors have occurred. The previously mentioned tools (Schema Validator and Google's Rich Results Test) are used for this, along with one new one. Google Search Console - as that is what we are referring to - is a service that allows you to monitor organic traffic coming from Google search. Furthermore, it allows you to inspect an individual URL for crawlability by Googlebot and the presence of structured data. To check whether a specific web page contains structured data, simply enter the URL into the Google Search Console search bar and press enter. After retrieving the data from the index, information about the page that Google already stores in its index will be displayed. If you implemented the structured data before Googlebot revisited the site, you should test the live URL. The button in the top-right corner of the tool is used for this purpose.

7. Monitor the display of rich results in Google

In Google Search Console, beyond checking an individual URL, you can monitor how many pages have structured data implemented, whether any errors occur, and how many times a rich result has been displayed (for certain data types). Two sections are used for this: Enhancements and Shopping. The first applies to structured data that can be used on any site. The second applies primarily to online stores and information submitted using Product schema.

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