In addition to ranking high for keywords, it can also be a big advantage to gain more space in the search results. This means that the result in question will stand out in the SERP and attract more attention, which in turn increases the chance that users will interact with your site. With the help of structured data, you can expand your spot in the search results.
What is structured data?
Structured data is a format for providing the search engine with information about a page and its content. With structured data, you can clarify the content on your site. Sometimes it can be difficult for Google to understand what certain parts are, and this is where you can help.
Different types of structured data
There are several different types of structured data, each serving a different purpose. In this article, we highlight some of the most common and what they mean. Hopefully, this gives you an idea of which structured data you should implement.
Article structured data
Anyone publishing an article, news article, or blog post on their site should mark it up with ‘Article structured data’. This lets you tell Google what the article is about, whether it’s a news article or a blog post, who the author is, and specify the article’s title.
Here’s what the code for ‘Article structured data’ looks like, which you can easily copy and fill in with the information for your news article or blog post:
<html>
<head>
<title>Article title</title>
<script type=”application/ld+json”>
{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “NewsArticle”,
“headline”: “News article title”,
“image”: [
“https://example.com/images/1×1/image.jpg”,
“https://example.com/images/4×3/image.jpg”,
“https://example.com/images/16×9/image.jpg”
],
“datePublished”: “2015-02-05T08:00:00+08:00”,
“dateModified”: “2015-02-05T09:20:00+08:00”,
“author”: [{
“@type”: “Person”,
“name”: “Jane Doe”,
“url”: “https://example.com/profile/janedoe123”
},{
“@type”: “Person”,
“name”: “John Doe”,
“url”: “https://example.com/profile/johndoe123”
}]
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
If it’s a blog post instead, change “NewsArticle” to “BlogPosting”.
Product structured data
For all e-commerce businesses out there, it’s important to know about ‘Product structured data’. As the name suggests, this is about specifying information about products on product pages. This allows Google to display valuable information about the product directly in the search results, such as price, reviews, shipping details, etc.
Hemtex is an example of a site that has implemented structured data for products. Here’s how it looks in the search results for “blue vase”:
The yellow-highlighted part is structured data.
If you sell products online, you should absolutely implement this on all product pages. Note that this is only relevant if you have reviews and ratings for the products. Having essential information such as price and stock status directly in the search results is very positive for the user experience. Copy this code and fill it with the correct information:
(Product structured data code, translated)
Breadcrumb structured data
Most websites, hopefully, already have breadcrumbs implemented. In that case, you should also implement ‘Breadcrumb structured data’. Google uses this to categorize the information from the page in the search results. This makes it easier for the search engine to determine what the page is about so it can rank in relevant search results.
Copy the following code and fill it with the correct information for Breadcrumb structured data:
(Breadcrumb structured data code, translated)
FAQ & How-to structured data
Google recently announced that they will show fewer FAQ and How-to rich results in the search results. These often look like this:
Above you can see how FAQ structured data looks in the search results.
Above you can see how How-to structured data looks in the search results.
They will no longer appear regularly, but only for “well-known, authoritative government and health websites” according to Search Engine Land.
However, this doesn’t mean we should stop answering important questions and writing FAQs on our sites. It is just as important as ever to provide users with relevant and important information. So keep answering questions and, above all, don’t remove text content because of this update.
More structured data
In this blog post, we’ve highlighted some common types of structured data, but as you can understand, there are many more. If you haven’t started implementing this yet, now is the time. In addition to reading our article linked above, you should also check out Google Search Central’s structured data guides to get an idea of what you should implement.
Tools for structured data
Once you’ve implemented relevant structured data, you should ensure it’s correct and meets the requirements. There are helpful tools for this. With these, you can see which structured data is present on the page in question and whether there are any errors.
So what are you waiting for? Start working with structured data right away!
Petra Svennerskog
SEO-specialist
Petra is one of our SEO-specialists working in Örnsköldsvik