Structured Data Universal SEO

Structured data is a process of tagging elements of your content or data into a pre-formatted repository.

Elements of a websites data structure is used and assists in identifying key elements of the content, its purpose, interpretation and intent.  Schema.org sets the universal standards for these data structures.

What is structured data and is it worth the effort?

Structured data is a standard vocabulary search engines need in order to capture and communicate highlighted facts and general intent from a set of pages within a website. Search engines are then able to display these highlighted (Rich) snippets within search page results.

A cinema or film listing is a really good example of this, run a search for a specific cinema in a town and city and you should see what’s playing and at what time, in the search results page.    Webmasters using structured data are feeding formatted content that the search engines can interpret and display as ‘snippets, info cards, carousels, knowledge boxes’ and more.

What are the benefits of Structured data?

With search engines ability to display enhanced search results, your website not only is looking more exciting and professional in search. It is a safe bet that sites with rich snippets, receive priority in search listings because they are more helpful to a user search experience.

What types of data are structured on Google?

Most search engines focus on structured data on items that apply to a broad audience.  The structure’s identifying and formatting, articles, films, events, products, reviews, local businesses, and more.

Can Structured Data improve my ranking in search?

Google stated sometime in 2017 that schema can indirectly help rankings, as this type of formatted data allows Google to better understand the content of a website, which could lead to better ranking.

How to structure data on a website?

In a technical context, structured-data requires inserting a unique schema markup code on a website.  Search engines use this to convey valuable information that users need to know from a web page.

To implement will entail modifying the code or functionality on your website.

The first most common method involves using Microdata markup. Microdata markup is open community HTML specifications that use data to define the structured within your website’s HTML code.

WordPress and Drupal have their own set of plugins/modules from the community of developers. These modules act by placing markup in the head of the page. This is our preferred method because content management systems are able to generate content dynamically, less prone to errors and can be easily read by the search engine.

There are also HTML5 extensions called RDFa which are tag attributes which name elements as structured-data. RDFa’s are similar to Microdata snippets.