What is Structured Data? Why Search Engines Loves It

“An explicit on-page optimization technique to notify search engines about the contents in a web page. Implementing it will help in easy crawling & indexing web pages in the form of rich results/snippets in SERP”

In this Digital era, the website has become a lead generating factory seamlessly. This is possible if and only if the website ranks organically at the top for niche keywords in the search engine results page.

On other hand getting traffic from non-targeted keywords is a rugged task in SEO. Still, it is possible with help of structured data even if your page doesn’t rank within the top five in the first page of SERP.

What is Structured Data?

Structured Data is a type of code format, to communicate with search engines about the content in a web page. Search engines make use of this information to present it in a richer way in search results by simply putting it at the source of the web page.

This would work out almost all business websites, especially for a business that has a wider range of targeted audience.

For instance, if you run a recipe blog having structured data implemented will create a rich result for that page increasing CTR to the same.

If you are a developer and looking for how to implement structured data for your client’s website visit Google Guides for Developers

Types of structured data

Structured data plays a vital role in transmitting the right signal to search engines regarding your business and website contents.

If you are a beginner and finding it tough to choose the right schema for your website, below is the type of structured data that can be useful in different cases.

Organization Schema Mark-up – A dedicated schema mark-up if you are concerned about brand signal to your organization. Emphasize your knowledge graph and website appearance in SERPS

Website Schema Mark-up – If your website has a site-wide search option, then this schema is apt for you to implement. With this a sitelinks search box gets enabled for your branded keywords eventually can extend for other keywords too.

Breadcrumbs Mark-up – A smarter way to show website architecture in search results.

Site Navigation Schema Mark-up – A better way to let search engines understand your website navigation and to have control over sitelinks organically.

Video Schema Mark-up – This type of schema can leverage your video presence in SERPs if you own a video hosting website. With this one can influence the video-based search results.

Schema Product & Offer Mark-up – Just imagine displaying product status and price at a search result, with this decision making and purchasing will be easier for customers.

Schema Rating Mark-up – Star rating mark-up which primarily introduced for e-commerce sites though, being used by any local business to promote reputation through SERPs

Article schema mark-up – If you are a blogger or your client love a blog often, then this is the schema to make the blog posts rank faster and topper at SERPs

Local Business Schema – Implementing this will leverage your local listing, with this you need to put your NAP details and other required information like payment method, opening hours etc.

Job schema mark-up – A must have the schema for a business that frequently hiring candidates for various positions. Doing so will let the career page appear faster for job-related queries in SERP.

Readymade tools to create

Can’t wait to implement the relevant schema mark-up for your website? Wait for a second and ask yourself this question. Whether you going to do this yourself or you own a development team?

Due to increased website development and maintenance costs, business owners take risks to accomplish uncomplicated tasks like these.

But it is simpler than you think, there are tons and tons of automated plugins (if you built your website with CMS) and online free tools to generate it for you.

WordPress Plugins

• Schema Pro
• WP Review Pro
• WP Product Review
• All In One Schema.org
• Rich Snippets WordPress Plugin
• Rich Reviews
• Schema App Structured Data

Online Tools

• Schema Mark-up Generator by Merkle
• Google’s Structured Data Helper & Data Highlighter
• Schema App’s JSON-LD Generator
• com
• JSON-LD Generator by Hall Analysis

Tools to test structured data

Hopefully, by now, you would have chosen the right schema mark-up that suits your need. And it’s not over yet.

It’s time to test your generated schema, you can do this with help of official “Structured Data Testing Tool” from Google.

Here you will be highlighted with warnings and errors that should be taken care of.

Conclusion

SEO is something evolving much faster than you can imagine. For better search appearance schema mark-up is a great opportunity for webmasters to interact effectively with search engines in a way robots can understand.

Adding this to your on-page checklist would give a ranking boost to your focus keyword and can stay ahead on a rival in the search engine results page. It’s time to forget old school SEO tactics and to gear up to the latest.