Published: Mar 25, 2023

A Complete Guide to Google Structured Data

Michael DiBiasio

QUICK SUMMARY:

Structured data organizes information in a standardized format, making it easier for search engines such as Google to understand and display content like product pages effectively. Implementing this enhances website visibility and search rankings, driving more traffic to client sites. Explore the benefits of structured data for optimizing online presence.

A quick search on structured data might cause marketers some initial confusion. Even for those who live and breathe these types of concepts at a marketing agency, there seem to be two popular related definitions that are not completely the same.

The more general and correct definition of structured data is information organized in a specific format or layout. This format can store and manipulate data more efficiently, making it easier to process and analyze.

The other definition limits its description of structured data to how it’s most often used to optimize for particular outcomes in search engine results pages (SERPs) and other marketing applications.

Let’s say you have a client running a YouTube channel who wants to gain more of an audience for their blog. Your agency needs to show the right information to convince searchers that your client is just what they are looking for.

So you encode rich text snippets to tell Google essential information about the recipe such as cook time, serving size, nutrition information, and recipe reviews. Here’s what a recipe schema markup might look like on the backend:

While on the front end, it looks like this. As you can probably guess, the websites that add structured data have more chances of making it to the top of the page.

This article will explore just what structured data is, examples, and how to leverage it for your clients’ success:

What Is Structured Data?

Structured data is any data that’s organized and stored according to a particular set of standardizing parameters. From a technical standpoint, a prevalent example would be data compiled into stored query language (SQL) databases.

Structured data in this broad sense is typically:

• Stored in a data warehouse
• Predefined before processing and analysis
• Limited to certain data types
• Generally more accessible and prevalent than unstructured data

A familiar example of structured data might be a simple spreadsheet or a CMS, where data points are organized in familiar, less flexible, but useful buckets, such as the name, title, email, and company name of a prospective customer.

Returning to the example of structured data defined in contemporary marketing speak, consider its use by Google and other search engines as markup metadata for enriching content such as a product page for one of your clients.

In this context, structured data markup does not appear on the actual web page for your client’s product. But it does provide details hidden in the code for that same page that enable Google and other partners to provide additional information to end users, which has the added benefit of further optimizing marketing and sales efforts.

Common Structured Data Types:

Examples of Structured Data

Let’s say you have a hyperlocal client that sells electric bicycles in their community. As one path of their buyer’s journey, consider an ideal customer who types the following query into Google:

ebike for sale near me

Here’s where structured data, and Google’s use of it today, comes into play. Below are the actual Google search results from this example query, which builds off of what Google does with unstructured data in the form of LocalBusiness Schema markups to offer useful details to end users:

Google Structured Data SERP Result Example

As you have probably noticed before, as a user yourself, there’s more going on in Google’s SERPs than there would have been in the past, where all you were presented with was a simple list of search results.

Several key elements of the UX in this screenshot originate from structured data included in the code for the sites of the businesses listed:

• Starred reviews are rich snippets pulled in by Google based on structured data
• The same can be said for details on items in stock
• The helpful details providing directions using local landmarks are also based on valid structured data

It’s important to note that structured data is not automatically utilized by Google or other search engines. But by including relevant structured data throughout web pages, you can position yourself for optimizations like those listed above when the bots crawl your site to catalog what’s included and how it might be relevant to users.

Examples of Structured Data from Popular Companies

Structured data can have a significant impact on Google search rankings and click-through rates, but what does that look like in the real world? Here are some examples of businesses and websites that have successfully implemented structured data:

1. TripAdvisor uses structured data to mark up hotel and restaurant listings with information such as ratings, reviews, and pricing. This has helped TripAdvisor to appear more prominently in search results and drive more traffic to its website.

2. Food Network gets Google rich results by marking up recipes with information such as cooking time, ingredients, and nutritional information. This has helped Food Network to appear in featured snippets and rich results, leading to increased visibility and click-through rates.

3. eBay uses structured data to mark up product listings with information such as product descriptions, prices, and availability. This has helped eBay to improve its search rankings and increase click-through rates, leading to higher sales and revenue.

4. Four Seasons Hotel uses schema to mark up its hotel listings with information such as room types, amenities, and pricing. This has helped Four Seasons to appear more prominently in local Google search results and drive more traffic to its website.

5. CNN uses structured data to provide rich results to news articles with information such as headlines, authors, and publication dates. This has helped CNN to appear in featured snippets and rich results, leading to increased visibility and click-through rates.

Remember that results may vary depending on a variety of factors, such as website content, industry, and competition. However, by following best practices and following structured data guidelines effectively, agencies can improve their clients’ search rankings and drive more traffic to their websites.

Why Is Structured Data Important?

Implementing structured data is a key aspect of any SEO strategy. Here’s how structured data can affect Google search rankings and click-through rates:

1. Improved search visibility: By using structured data to mark up content, websites can provide search engines with more accurate and detailed information about the content on their pages. This can lead to improved search visibility, as search engines are better able to understand and index the content.

2. Rich results and improved site indexing: By providing details to a search engine, you essentially make it easier for them to understand the content you’re putting out. Structured data can enable rich results, which are enhanced search results that include additional information beyond the typical title and description. Rich results can include features such as images, reviews, and ratings, which can increase click-through rates and drive more traffic to a website.

3. Featured snippets and higher position in Google search results: By providing rich snippets, your listing contains more useful structured data types–such as reviews, pricing, and ratings. Structured data can help websites appear in featured snippets, which are brief answers to search queries that appear at the top of search results. Appearing in featured snippets can increase visibility and credibility, as well as drive more traffic to a website.

You need informative content that is well structured, has proper schema attributed to it, and has all the proper keywords to answer a user's question in a concise way that Google sees as important. But don't go chasing waterfalls; it can be difficult to obtain them, and if you solely write content around JUST trying to appease Google, you'll be less likely to hold onto that Featured Snippet for long.
–Rachel Jackson, Lead SEO Specialist at Wit Digital

4. Local SEO: Structured data can be particularly effective for local SEO, as it can help businesses appear in local search results and local packs. By using structured data to mark up information such as business hours, reviews, and location data, businesses can improve their visibility and drive more traffic from local search queries.

5. Mobile optimization and a better user experience: By telling the search engine what it is your content is about, they better find what they’re looking for when they perform a Google search. Structured data can help websites optimize for mobile search, as it enables search engines to display content in a mobile-friendly format. By using structured data to mark up mobile-specific content, such as app download links or mobile-optimized pages, websites can improve their visibility and click-through rates on mobile devices.

What Is Nesting?

Nesting is organizing data in a hierarchical way, placing data within other data structures. Think of it as a set of Russian Matryoshka dolls: a set of data of decreasing size is nested inside the other. Just as the dolls can be opened to reveal smaller dolls nested inside, data can be accessed by drilling down through the levels of nesting to reveal the information contained within.

For example, in JSON, you can organize data in a way that lets you put a bunch of objects inside other objects (like the Russian Dolls). This makes it possible to create more complex and detailed data structures. By doing this, you can better organize and access the data, which makes it easier to analyze and work with.

Structured Data vs. Unstructured Data

Before getting deeper into our discussion of structured data, it’s worth answering the obvious question about how it might differ from unstructured data. Although both structured and unstructured data have applications beyond SEO, such as text messages and contact lists, we’ll focus mainly on the search implications of both.

Unstructured data is raw data that is not restricted by conventional database structures but can also have powerful applications for your marketing efforts. This means that crawlers, like the ones deployed by Google, must review the content and make their best, machine-learning-based guess about what the content is about.

However, it offers much more flexibility to create powerful, engaging, and interesting content that goes beyond a list of data points.

Schema vs. Structured Data

What is the difference between schema and structured data? To put it succinctly, one is part of the other, but they are not the same. Most structured data use schema.org vocabulary, but not all structured data is schema.

In summary, if the structured data is not one of the hundreds of structured data items specified in the Google Search Central structured data gallery, it is much less likely to improve how your client appears in Google Search results.
And keep in mind that just because something is listed on Schema.org doesn't mean that it's a Google-recognized structured data element.

Google Structured Data: How It’s Used

As the continued leader of search by a wide margin, Google dictates much about how structured data is used to supplement SEO.

To recap what we’ve touched on a few times above, Google uses structured data primarily to enable rich elements in their SERPs.

How Google uses this structured data can vary:

With so many opportunities to have your clients’ sites highlighted by Google, the natural next question is how to add structured data to site code so it can be used in one of the above ways.

How To Add Structured Data to a Website

The good news about adding structured data to sites is that some of it can be done for you by SEO plug-ins.

Main flavors of structured data:

When you have to do it yourself, the most common and simplest format for it (JSON-LD) is easier to work with and less likely to cause any issues with other page elements when adding it to code than you might think.

4 Common Schema Markup Examples for Structured Data

Schema markups are useful for many types of content like events, people, restaurants, movies, and more. There are hundreds of markup types you can use to boost your clients’ search rankings.

Table of Structured Data Markup for Common Types of Content:

Which Type of Structured Data Should You Use

Here is a quick overview of some of the most commonly used types of Schema markups:

When it comes to implementation, because it’s preferred by Google and simple to learn, we recommend using JSON-LD. Note that while structured data doesn’t positively impact search ranking, failure to code with it accurately could trigger action by Google that suppresses your rankings due to code errors.

Structured Data Tools and Testing

Several tools help you utilize and test your structured data (and other code). Use these to help place relevant data and to ensure any code added to your sites is clean and ready to be used by Google and other search engines.

Structured data improves SEO efforts. Adhere to general structured data guidelines to make it to Google’s rich results, use SEO tools, and track your progress using SEO reporting software and live dashboards to keep track of keyword rankings for your clients automatically.

Written by

Michael DiBiasio

Michael DiBiasio is a Marketing and Storytelling Consultant and Content Strategist working out of New York City and Burlington, Vermont. With experience as a Head of Marketing (SaaS, eComm) and as a Video Marketing Lead (professional services), he helps stakeholders find the sweet spot between audience needs and values and their own sales and service goals.