An overview of structured data for SEO
SEOs have been talking about structured data for a few years now — ever since Google, Bing, Yahoo! and Yandex got together in 2011 to create a standardized list of attributes and entities which they all agreed to support, and which became known as Schema.org. However, there’s still a lot of confusion around what structured data is, what it’s for, and how and when to implement structured data for SEO purposes. In fact, a survey carried out last year by Bing found that only 17% of marketers are using (or were planning to use) Schema.org structured data markup.
In this two-part series, you’ll learn the basics of structured data: first we’ll talk about what it is, and how it relates to SEO (Part 1), and then I’ll take you through a simple process for identifying structured data opportunities and implementing structured data on your own site (Part 2).
What is “structured data”?
“Structured data” as a general term simply refers to any data which is organized (i.e., given “structure”). For example, if you have a bunch of scattered Post-It notes with phone messages about meetings, dates, times, people, etc, and you organize these into a table with labeled rows and columns for each type of information, you’re structuring the data.
How does structured data support SEO?
Google, Bing, and other search engines encourage webmasters to use structured data, and incentivize that usage by providing benefits to websites with structured data correctly implemented.
Some of these benefits include search result enhancements and content-specific features, such as:
- Rich search results: Includes styling, images, and other visual enhancements
- Rich cards: A variation on rich search results, similar to rich snippets and designed for mobile users
- Enriched search results: Includes interactive or immersive features
- Knowledge Graph: Information about an entity such as a brand
- Breadcrumbs: Breadcrumbs in your search result
- Carousels: A collection of multiple rich results in a carousel style
- Rich results for AMP: To have your AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) appear in carousels and with rich results, you’ll need to include structured data
