What is structured data and why should you use it? How can you quickly implement it without any technical skills? Oh, and are you ready for more traffic 😉?
In this blogpost, the following elements of structured data will be covered:
What is structured data in SEO?
According to Google, structured data is a standardized format for providing additional information about a page and classifying its content. For example, review stars, how-to steps or recipe ingrediens. This helps search engines to understand what the page is about and these bits of information can also appear in the search results.
Below is an example of structured data (review stars) in the SERP from one of our affiliate sites:
Here is what structured data looks like in the source-code of the page:
Why is structured data important?
Structured data is important for SEO for four simple reasons:
- Rich result > higher CTR > more traffic
- Extra info > relevancy increases > better or more rankings
- People spend more time in Google > Google makes more money > continued support for structured data
- New structured data formats will be supported in the future > early adoption could give you an advantage over competitors
1. Higher click-through rates
It can enriche your result in the SERP and click-through rates might improve because of it. Since your result is not only richer but often also bigger and more attention grabbing, people are more likely to click on a rich result compared to a normal result.
2. Increased relevancy
It provides extra relevancy and additional information that search engines use to better understand entities on the page. As a result, your page might rank for more queries or has slight improved rankings since it became even more relevant.
3. Google’s way of domination
Always try to think about SEO through the eyes of Google. They want their users to spend more time in the search results, rather than on our websites. At the same time, they want to build the most complete index of the world wide web. Structured data does exactly this. Through richer and more interactive results, users will stay longer within Google and thus it makes them more money through ads, products or data mining. Now if you like this or not, it is inevitable to implement structured data eventually, as otherwise your competitors will.
4. New structured data formats
Google rolls out new forms of supported structured data over time. This is interesting, because if you are an early adopter you can get an advantage over your competitors. You can do this by regularly visiting this structured data search gallery page to checkout all current supported formats. Hustler tip: use a service like Sken.io to get notified when the content on a page changes. Simply google [get notification when website changes] and you will come accross plenty of options 🤠.
Hustler tip: bookmark these pages for easy access 🚀:
What is schema markup?
Schema markup is a standardized computing language that describes the content of the page in a structured way that search engines can understand. All available markup and documentation can be found on Schema.org.
It contains two hierachical categories:
- Types
- Properties
Each type can contain more subtypes with properties that describe what they are. Quick example:
Company details
Type: Company - Property: SEO Hustlers
Frequently Asked Questions
Type: Question - Property: How do I start a profitable side hustle? Type: Answer - Property: By reading and implementing the tips from SEOHustlers.com
There are three types of formats that you can use to implement schema:
- JSON-LD
- Microdata
- RDFa
Now without explaining all of them, Google has already mentioned that JSON-LD is their preferred version of structured data. If you want more info, checkout Google’s extensive documentation about structured data formats.
Not without reason, as it is very clean as you can see from the examples above and you can simple copy and paste this in an HTML document without messing up the code. It both works in the
and sections of your site too.Don’t worry if you discover that your website uses another format. Google can still parse and read them.
How to implement structured data the hustler way
If we wanted to, we could start writing JSON-LD from scratch but we are definitely not developers. However, why bother if there’s a 100 times faster way to do it? Remember: work smart not hard 😉.
Schema markup generators online
There are a lot of free tools online that generate the code for you:
Simply visit the tool, choose the markup you want to generate and fill in the blanks!
Now copy and paste the generated code into a WordPress post or page. As long as it contains the full code and is within the or section, it should work. Depending on your WordPress theme that’s all you need to do.
Using another CMS? No worries, there is probably a field where you can place custom HTML or other code. Paste it there.
Structured Data WordPress Plugins
Still too lazy? Some plugins also help you generating JSON-LD within WordPress:
- Yoast SEO (has most of the markups you need)
- Schema & Structured Data for WP & AMP
- SNIP (paid but really good)
Validating and troubleshooting structured data
Ok you have choosen the markup you would like, generated the code, implemented it, but no rich result is showing up in the SERP?
First of all, implementing structured data is not a guarantee for a rich result. However, it is very unlikely that none of your structured data will show up if you have implemented lots of it correctly. Always follow these three steps:
- Implement structured data
- Validate it with the Schema.org validator or with Google’s Rich results test
- Submit your URL in Google Search Console to make sure it gets recrawled
After submitting your URL again and being sure of the correct implementation, wait for a few days or a week or so to check whether it’s being picked up by Google. You can also check your Search Appearance report within Google 📈:
Final thoughts TL;DR 😎
- Structured data enriches your snippets within Google
- It may increase CTR and thus traffic and thus profit
- JSON-LD is the recommended format
- Generate structured data the easy way
- Online generators
- Plugins
- Validate and test
- Schema validator
- Rich results test
- Monitor your performance within Google Search Console
- Best markups for affiliate marketing or dropshipping:
- Review stars
- Review snippet
- FAQs
- Sitebox search
- Local business
- Video
Let us know what your favorites are if leave a comment if you run into any issues. We are here to help. Happy hustling 🤠!
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