What Exactly is Structured Data in SEO and How Does It Work?

Remember, search engine optimisation is not just some fancy digital tech vocabulary. It’s a real thing and a big deal if you want to help your website stay visible to search engines and humans alike. Essentially, you must know that being visible affects your bottom line. This means that only when visitors see you will they ever get the chance to do business with you. This is why you must keep investing and putting more effort into the optimisation of your website. And one of the many techniques you can utilize to keep staying visible is the use of structured data in SEO. Keep reading to learn all that this is about, its importance, how to start using this SEO technique, the useful tools, and every other thing you need to know for starters.

What is Structured Data?

Structured data is a unique method for providing more information about pages on a website to help Google better understand its content and what the site is about. Long story short, that’s the main purpose of this SEO technique. With structured data, you also benefit or get eligible to appear in Google’s special search result features, which contain information that searchers can see at a glance to get them to click on your website. Structured data is one of the major things you must do to get your technical SEO right.

You might want to ask, “of what benefit is structured data for SEO to my website?” Truth is, applying structured data to your website is very important but not as popular as it should be. In fact, some business owners feel they don’t need it. Well, if you intend to improve your click-through rate, increase your dwell time, and achieve other relevant KPIs, you must start using structured data for SEO.

Do you know you can search for products from the search engine results page and get a link to the product’s page right away? Yes, that’s one of the amazing things you can do when you use structured data for SEO.

Tips for Using Structured Data for SEO 

If you intend to start using structured data for SEO, make sure it only holds information within the content of the page and not something different on the page. Furthermore, you don’t necessarily need to provide every information. Instead, for the recommended properties, ensure you provide accurate and complete information. Also, creating blank pages to house your structured data is an absolute no-no. In order not to confuse your users, make sure all information about your brand on various medium is the same without any alteration or mix up.

The major structured data formats Google supports are JSON-LD (most recommended), Microdata, and RDFa. The structured data is a code put in the header or footer of a page. Therefore, as an SEO expert, it is pertinent that you have basic coding knowledge. This will go a long way in helping you create structured data for SEO.

However, if you are not proficient in editing the code of complex or custom made websites, you can use the third party feature on Google Tag Manager to add the structured data code to the website.

Additionally, if you own a Content Management System (CMS)-based website like WordPress and the likes, you can use Yoast SEO to create your structured data. It simply picks up all the data you provide and use it to create your structured data.

In conclusion, some of the tools you should work with when creating and testing your structured data include Schema.org, Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool, Google’s Rich Results Test Tool and Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper. With Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper, you can create structured data for local businesses, events, articles, job posting, FAQs page, movies, restaurants, and other types of structured data.