How to use structured data to improve your SEO
Wednesday, 9th May 2018
Structured data is a way that we can help search engines to understand more about your website by marking up certain information and providing helpful signposts.
For example, if you have a telephone number displayed on your website, there is some HTML code behind that to specify the where to show it, the colour to display the number in and the typeface to use. Structured data can tell search engine crawlers what it is - that it is in fact a telephone number, so that it can be listed as such in search results and business listings.
Making website code easier to crawl and providing more information about the content on your website has many benefits - third party websites can use it for more immersive features such as:
- Twitter Cards
- Social Media features
- AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)
- Product reviews in search results
Not every website is suitable for structured data right now, the best use cases we've seen include:
- Blog articles
- Product information
- Reviews
- Videos
Getting ahead
Currently, not many websites are using structured data so this is a great opportunity to get ahead of your competition with some simple markup. Especially if you run an ecommerce website where the potential for rich markup of products and product reviews is huge.
How do I know if I have structured data in place?
You can check using Google's Structured Data Testing Tool. You'll get to see what markup you currently have in place on each page you test and you'll be able to see warnings and errors on your data.
How do I markup my code?
The full markup vocabulary can be found at Schema.org and there are examples of use within your pages. Simply add the tags to your existing code and run each page in Google's testing tool to see if it validates.
We are here to help make your website rich with structured data. If you need us please get in touch.
