You have probably searched up a product on Google looking for the best prices possible. The results you see always have a title, description, URL, and sometimes an image. But every once in a while, a result will show a review out of five stars or a price at the bottom of the result. Where does Google find this information to show on its results page? That is where structured data comes in.
What is Structured Data?
Structured data is additional information about your product, service, company, or blog post communicated to Google through a snippet of code. This snippet of code is typically written in JSON language and includes multiple properties.
The information you provide in your code snippet will give Google the opportunity to use it to enhance your search result with a feature called “rich results,” which can lead to a higher click-through-rate. The more information you provide about your company, the happier Google will be. Google wants to provide the best experience for its users as possible.
Benefits of Structured Data
If you include this additional information for Google, it has a chance of showing in Google’s search results page (SERP) as rich results. Studies show that users are more likely to click on a website that includes rich results. If your blog posts or location pages are getting a high number of SERP impressions but low clicks, test out different structured data properties and note the difference in click-through-rates.
By providing Google with these properties, you are giving more information about your company or website. Some information might not have been found by Google during its crawl of your website. So including information like price, reviews, ratings, author, or descriptions can increase your page’s relevance for target keywords. This can potentially lead to higher rankings.
Types of Structured Data
There are multiple different structured data types for various page types. If you are a business serving a specific city or geographic area, using localBusiness structured data is the best option. If you sell products on your website, product structured data will be beneficial. Some of the most common types include:
- Organization
- Product/Service
- Article
- Contact Page
- About Page
- FAQ Page
Learn more about structured data types at schema.org.
How to Implement
We have talked a lot about this JSON snippet of code that needs to be on your website. But how do we implement it? Well there are two options to choose from:
- Manually place the snippet of code in the head section of the page you are marking up.
- Create a custom HTML tag in Google Tag Manager and have it fire when your page is viewed.
Both methods have proven to work well but I would recommend the first method as the code is manually placed on the website and easier for Google to access.
Conclusion
Structured data can be a powerful tool if used correctly. Use it to enhance your SERP appearance and improve click-through-rates. If you have a blog on your website, start marking up your posts with article structured data. The opportunities are endless.
Want help implementing structured data? Get in touch!
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