Structured data is a buzzing word in content marketing industry. Google always want to provide the exact information to its users. Also it ensures the relevancy of information in a content.
What is Structured Data SEO?
When it comes to structured data the term actually means organized data. But in content marketing perspective the structured data is the term used for adding an additional mark up for HTML pages. Google always use chatbots to analyze the data in a content. By using this mark up, you are giving more specific data to Google chat bots.
When you discuss a specific topic in the content, you can add markup to let the chatbot know the important part of the content. For example, if you are writing about various types of testing such as acceptance testing, functional testing, regression testing etc. you can give schema mark up for the important points in your content.
The main advantage of using structured data is rich snippets. When someone searches a website that has already set up schema.org then you can see some additional information about that website and its metadata.
We cannot talk about structured data without talking about Schema.org. This is the most commonly used approach for structured data mark up for SEO. Some website also uses microformat.org for the same purpose.
If you are using schema.org to markup structured data you can use either one of microdata format or JSON-LD syntax. Microdata format is integrated with HTML of your page and JSON-MD uses JavaScript object to set up markup in your page. Microdata is the most advisable approach for content marketers to aid with their SEO task.
Why is Structured Data SEO Important?
Google likes organized pages more than unorganized ones. Websites which has structured markup data will get more preference than others. Google can use this data to solve the exact query of a user.
Some users won’t need a long explanation of their queries. In such a situation, snippets can help them to get the answer they need. There are many benefits of structured data. I am listing out some important benefits of using structured data in your website
Structured data can help search engine to understand your content:
Structured data in a website can help the search engine to organize the data in a website. It can help search engine to identify the data of your content and provide the exact result for users. By doing this, your website can be on the top of SERP and as a result, its ranking will also be higher. By offering the content in a simple and organized format both the search engine and your website are offering a better user experience.
It can help you to rank better for answer box queries:
By offering rich snippets and answer box your website will get more visibility among the users. It can increase the traffic towards your website and it’s ranking also. Answer box queries can be very useful to make your website rank higher.
Structured data can help you answer voice-based queries:
By offering rich snippets and answer box your website will get more visibility among the users. It can increase the traffic towards your website and it’s ranking also. Answer box queries can be very useful to make your website rank higher.
Structured data can help you to get featured in the Knowledge graph:
Google is planning to implement voice-based queries by 2020. If your website can create structured data and answer user queries using snippets and answer box queries then you can be a part of this huge initiative from Google.
Structured data can help you to get featured in the mobile accelerated page:
AMP is a new feature Google implements to ensure fast loading of mobile-based web pages. If you can use structured data in both regular as well as AMP. It can ensure to get your page featured as a rich snippet.
Structured vs. Unstructured data:
Structured data is a more organized form of data which can be understandable by machines easily. It can be easily accessed using data mining solutions. The most suitable examples of structured data are basic customer data like name, address, phone number, etc. It is like arranging files in a cabinet with labels on it which is very easy to access by anyone.
Unstructured data is something which doesn’t have any structure. It is very difficult to interpret unstructured data. Emails, word processing files, PDF, spreadsheets, video, Audio, etc are some examples of unstructured data. You can store and manage these files without understanding the format of the file by the system. It is time-consuming and expensive to make it more structured.
Structured Data Google Penalties:
Adding structured data is always helpful. But if you haven’t used it properly it can lead to many problems. Google takes such offenses seriously and may affect your website ranking and may even have to face a penalty. You need to read the guidelines before making such mistakes. . Here are some common mistakes webmasters make while using structured markup
Using inappropriate structured data:
This can happen when you don’t use the right structured data. If you are using different data to specify your topic then it can be a problem. If you are using content for your company and mark up the service instead of company description then it can be a problem
Structured data differ from on-page content:
You should not use data that is not present in your content. If you are dealing with a health-based content and if you mark up a different data which is not in the content at all, it can lead to a penalty.
Violating Google’s guideline for a specific data type:
You can check on Google’s developer pages on allowed data types that can be used as a structured markup. If you can’t follow those data types it can lead to further problems.
Violating Google’s structured data guidelines:
If you use the structured data without following Google’s guidelines, it can also lead to problems. In addition to using certain data types, Google also want you to follow some guidelines when you use structured data in your website. Don’t ignore them at all.
Taking shortcuts:
If you are trying to manipulate data in order to get more website traffic then Google cannot leave you like that. It will take action against your website immediately after finding this issue. So, don’t try to manipulate data to get more visitors to your website.
These are some common mistakes webmasters make to get more search engine traffic. But it can lead to a penalty from Google and also can impact your website ranking negatively. So, stay away from all these mistakes and focus on providing better content to the user in the right way.
How Structured Data SEO Works?
Google works very hard to find the content of a page. To help Google to find the data of a page, webmasters can provide some clues related to the page. Structured data is a format that can help Google to find the information on a page and classify the page accordingly.
If you are writing a recipe in your page you can give specific information like ingredients, calorie, time to prepare the dish, etc to make Google’s job easy. For example, a company called Unlimited Ball bearing like their contact number, type of contact and other details. The company used JSON-LD structured data to markup important information about them. Like this, every website can use markup data to specify their important details.
<script type=”application/ld+json”>
{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “Organization”,
“url”: “http://www.example.com”,
“name”: “Unlimited Ball Bearings Corp.”,
“contactPoint”: {
“@type”: “ContactPoint”,
“telephone”: “+1-401-555-1212”,
“contactType”: “Customer service”
}
}
</script>
While adding structured data, you should be careful not to add any information from outside of a page. Also, it should be visible to the user and also describe the content of the page well to the user.
How to Add Structured Data to Your Website?
You can add structured data to your website easily. But the process is a bit lengthy. You can get a clear idea about the process from below
Using WordPress plugins:
If you are one of them who uses WordPress for your website this will be easier to do. Follow the steps given below
- Install the Schema App Structured Data plugin into your WordPress> this plugin will create mark up for your website. You have to edit it manually and select the mark up you want to set for your website
- After you downloaded the plugin you can upload it by going to Upload plugin>Add New. Then you can click and choose a new file to upload
- Install the file and activate it on your website
- Now you can start to edit the markup which is provided by the plugin and select the mark up you want from it
- Usually, the plugin offers the best markups in the content. But you can choose a suitable markup for your content and avoid the rest
Easy right. WordPress users can easily set up mark up using WordPress plugin. No need to know coding or anything to set up mark up in your content page.
Using Google’s structured data markup helper:
If you are not using WordPress to host your website there is another option to do structured data markup easily. It is by using Google’s structured data mark up a helper. You can go to the tool and easily choose the data you want to mark up from your website content
- Go to Google’s structured data mark up a helper and enter URL of the page you want to mark up
- You can see a box below the search box and there you can also enter the HTML code of the page if you want other than entering URL.
- Then google offers you some options to select from. It will have 10 categories of articles. If your article falls under any of the given categories you can select that
- After selecting the category of article, you can start tagging it
- While you click on next option you can see a page where on the left side you can see the article of yours and on the right side there will be a schema tool
- If you want to mark up anything from the content then highlight it on the left side. You can see the corresponding mark up on the right side of your screen
- On the right side, you will see a drop-down list from which you can select the type of option you want. If you want to mark up the title of the page then select the option ‘Name’ from the list. If you are selecting an image then you can choose ‘Image’ option from the drop-down list
- If you have any doubt while using data markup then you can check ‘My Data Items Panel’. It will show you all the type of elements you can use for mark up. No need to use all the elements for mark up
- After creating markup data, you need to create HTML from the right-hand corner.
- Then a new window appears and here you need to select JSON-LD from the second box on the left side. It is the preferred type of structured data for Google
- Now copy paste the code that is generated and go to the source code for a specific page
- Delete the existing source code and paste this new code in its place
- That’s it, you have completed the task
- It is very difficult to do this process without technical knowledge. A small mistake can mess up all data of your website. So, you can do this easily by hiring a developer without any tension
Conclusion:
Adding Structured data into your website is the best practice you can do. You can improve your website visibility and increase its ranking b implementing this. It may take some time to give the exact result you want. Don’t waste your time, start implementing structured data into your website and see some good results.