Structured data refers to a standardized data format used to mark up the information about your website or organization. It helps search engines like Google better understand your published content, author details, and highlights pertinent information about pricing, reviews, and more.
What Types of Structured Data are Commonly Used?
Currently, many data types are available for implementation. Some of the most commonly used by SEOs include:
- Breadcrumbs: Trails embedded into a webpage will help indicate the page’s position within your site hierarchy and allows users to understand your site.
- Product: Share information about your site products like pricing, inventory status, ratings, and more.
- FAQ: Answer frequently asked questions about your business, products, and services directly in the SERPs.
- Event: Share information about existing and upcoming events, such as date, location, time, and additional notes that can help you appear in results.
- Video: Share video details including, thumbnails, duration, upload dates, and informative descriptions.
- Local Business: Assist local users in finding your business online by sharing business hours, phone numbers, business reviews, descriptions, and more.
For a more comprehensive list of schema types and vocabulary, please visit Schema.org
How Structured Data Benefits SEO
Although not a direct ranking factor, structured data does contribute to your SEO strategy in multiple ways. But what are these benefits?! Let’s focus on a few ways that structured data can impact SEO performance.
Content Intent Understanding
Through the use of structured data, search engines can better interpret the intent of your content. In providing clarity, Google is more inclined to position content as an authority due to intent relevancy and related search queries.
Increased Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
Increased CTR can be achieved through rich snippets (aka rich results). Rich snippets generate more clicks by providing enhanced decoration with descriptive, content-rich information to inform users more effectively in the SERPs.
Increased Conversions
Since improved CTR equates to more website traffic, proper use of structured data will impact conversion growth exponentially.
Improved Rankings
Simply put, the more clicks generated will lead to an increase in organic ranking position for relevant queries. Additionally, this increase also relates to user expectations being met.
So, What’s Next?
Understanding structured data and its importance to an SEO strategy is the first step in the integration process. Now that you understand how structured data benefits SEO, it is time to research the types of schema markup that more closely align with your website content and business goals.
Stay tuned for more information about structured data and SEO!
Photo by Serpstat on StockSnap
