Structured data is the data that Google and other search engines will read to understand how your site is structured. It is becoming more and more important to use Schema.org vocabulary to have good SEO results.
If your site is well structured and search engines recognize the relationship between each entity on your page, you are more likely to have rich results or a snippet. What does all this mean exactly? We explain all this to you in this article.
What exactly is structured data?
As mentioned earlier, Schema.org Markup Vocabulary, also known as Schema, is a semantic vocabulary of standardized markup that is appended to the HTML of pages. These tags help search engines understand the content and context of your web page and better represent it in search results.
Basically, Schema is simply the language used to represent data. This data is called structured data. For example, if your site is a recipe site, you can use structured data to show cooking time, user ratings, and more. The more relevant information you enter, the better your result will be in search engines and the greater the chances that your publication will end up in the rich results.
Types of Schema markup and how to implement them
There are 27 types of markup that Google recognizes:
- Article
- Book
- Breadcrumb
- Carousel
- Course
- Database
- Overall Employer Rating
- Event
- Fact check
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Home activities
- How-to
- Image license
- Job offer
- Learning video
- Math Solvers
- Movie
- Educational Q&A
- Estimated salary
- Podcast
- Practice issues
- Q&A
- Recipe
- Software apps (Beta)
- Text to audio
- Subscription and paid content
- Video
To implement markup, there are 2 ways: automatic generators, which are perfect for beginners, and manual implementation.
Structured data markup generators
Generators are perfect for beginners because they allow you to implement structured data without any code knowledge. We recommend the Yoast SEO plugin. This extension adds the most important structured data to your website. You can then go from page to page and article to article to change the data on a case-by-case basis, but usually the right data is in the right places. On the other hand, you can modify, for example, the contact page to designate it as a contact page and not an ordinary page.
Manual implementation of structured data
If you ever can’t find what you need in the automatic generators, you can add the information manually. If you’re afraid to code, don’t worry, it’s quite simple to add or change some values. There are two ways to add this code, with JSON-LD or Microdata.
JSON-LD
JSON-LD is simply a way of writing code. We advise using this way of writing because this way is less likely to break your website, and it is the format that Google prefers.
This code is added in the <head> section of the relevant page and mentions the following information:
- @context: specifies the vocabulary, Schema.org
- @type: specifies the type of schema used, such as page, post, video
- headline: gives the name of the article or page to search engines
- author: gives the author of the post or page to search engines
- datePublished: specifies the publication date of the post or page
- image: gives the link of the cover image of the page or article
As you can see, the JSON-LD code is quite simple. You can add more data when the need arises by simply modifying the code.
Microdata
Microdata is essentially the same as JSON-LD and is used only when aiming to target a specific search engine that does not use JSON-LD. On the other hand, it is less easy than JSON-LD to implement as the code, and each element of the code, must be added directly to the HTML of the page separately.
As you can see, each Microdata element is in its own HTML element. It is therefore less easy to use for neophytes. It is also more difficult to use in large websites such as online businesses as you have to add the code to each product, each page, etc.
On the other hand, if you need to use it, you must use the elements of JSON-LD in the elements of microdata. Here are the three new elements of Microdata:
- itemscope: creates an item and says the rest of the item describes the item
- itemtype: specifies the vocabulary used and the type of Schema, for example Article
- itemprop: specifies the property of the item, such as headline or datePublished
Are you ready to implement structured data in your website?
In conclusion, structured data sounds scary, but it’s still easy to implement in your website. If you have read this entire article, you have everything you need to do so. On the other hand, if you are not sure of the procedure to follow, we are here to help you.
Need help implementing structured data on your site?
Josée Barrette
I started working in the web industry in 2005 as a project manager/coordinator. Subsequently, I led production teams and project managers. In 2014, I decided to put my knowledge and experience at the service of small businesses and self-employed workers.