Structured Data Markup that Google Search Supports

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What is Structured Data?

Structured data helps tell search engines more about the important things on your web pages, like your contact details, reviews, events or recipes. When you add special codes to your pages, it gives search engines like Google extra context about what the page is really about. This allows them to learn quicker things like who you are, what you do, or what an event is about.

Some common things people add these special codes for are – their phone number and address (contact details), ratings and reviews, upcoming events, information about people or companies, recipes on a food blog, and more. By adding the codes, you help search engines understand better what the main things on each page are without having to read all the text. It lets them highlight these entities better in their search results.

Benefits of Using Structured Data

There are several benefits of using structured data on your website:

• Improve search engine visibility: By providing additional context about your content, structured data helps search engines better understand what your pages are about. This can help improve rankings and visibility in search results.
• Enable rich snippets: Rich snippets are special structured search result blocks that appear for certain types of content like reviews, recipes, products etc. They help capture user attention and drive more clicks to your site.
• Verification and claims: Structured data allows you to verify information and claims about your business like address, phone number etc. This builds more trust with users.
• Aggregations: Search engines can aggregate structured data across different sites to provide a collective view of entities like people, businesses, events etc. This increases discoverability.
• Voice assistants: As voice assistants get more advanced, they will pay more attention to structured data for a better understanding of your content and responding accurately to user queries.
• Accessible to all devices: Structured data enhances the user experience across all devices like desktop, mobile, tablets etc. since search engines can extract and parse it easily.

Main Types of Structured Data

There are several common types of structured data supported by Google and other search engines. Here are some of the most widely used ones:

Contact Information

This includes structured data for contact details like telephone number, email address, physical address etc. It helps search engines understand and surface this information better for local businesses.

Organization / Company

Provides structured context about an organization like its name, location, founders, number of employees, products/services offered etc. Helps in positioning the company profile better.

People / Person

Markup for biography details of individuals like name, image, job title, employer, biography, gender etc. Useful for authors, public figures, celebrity’s pages.

Events

Structured event metadata for details like name, location, start/end date, description, organizer etc. Enables rich snippets in search and better discoverability.

Reviews

Reviews can be marked up with details like rating, review body, author, date etc. Helps qualify reviews and enables rich snippets in search results.

Products / Items

Product listings can be optimized with properties like name, image, description, price, stock availability, manufacturer, offer/deal etc.

Recipes

Recipes structured data helps search engines understand ingredients, instructions, preparation time, author, calories etc.

FAQs

Commonly asked questions and their answers can be marked up to improve discoverability of support pages.

Articles

Metadata for articles includes headline, description, author name, publication date, word count etc.

This covers some of the most widely implemented structured data types supported by Google and other search engines. The schema.org vocabulary has many more entity types that can be explored as needed.

How to Implement Structured Data

There are two main ways to implement structured data on web pages:

1. JSON-LD (Json for Linked Data)

JSON-LD is a JSON-based format for structured data. It allows markup to be directly embedded in web pages written in HTML, PHP, ASP or other templating languages.

The structured data is defined within script tags with type=”application/ld+json”. Here is a simple example of JSON-LD for contact details:

html

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<script type=”application/ld+json”>

{

  “@context”: “http://schema.org”,

  “@type”: “Organization”,

  “name”: “XYZ Company”,

  “url”: “www.xyzcompany.com”,

  “contactPoint”: [{

    “@type”: “ContactPoint”,

    “telephone”: “+91-1234567890”,

    “contactType”: “customer support”

  }]

}

</script>

2. Microdata

Microdata uses HTML5’s new data-vocabulary to annotate existing content. It adds attributes directly to existing HTML tags within <div> or <div> tags.

For example:

html

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<div itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/Product”>

  <span itemprop=”name”>Shirt</span> 

  <span itemprop=”brand”>XYZ</span>

  <img itemprop=”image” src=”shirt.jpg”>

</div>

Google mostly supports both JSON-LD and Microdata formats for structured data implementation.

Structured Data Testing and Verification

Once structured data is implemented on pages, it’s important to test and verify it properly:

• Google Structured Data Testing Tool – Paste the URL and it will validate the structured data and point out any errors.
• InternationalizationTags.org – Another tool to debug Microdata and JSON-LD errors.
• Search Console Preview – Submit sitemap and preview how structured snippets may look in search results.
• On-page/live DOM testing – Inspect element and check if attributes are recognized correctly.
• Search results – Monitor if rich snippets are appearing properly over time as indexing occurs.

Regular testing helps identify and fix issues early. It’s also important to monitor search results for accurate rendering of structured data.

Popular Schemas for Specific Industries

Certain industries have predefined schemas optimized for their use cases:

Recipes: Recipe schema captures recipe ingredients, instructions, duration etc.

Books: Book schema provides metadata like title, author, publisher, datePublished etc.

Music: MusicRecording and MusicGroup schemas enable rich snippets for musicians.

Movies: Movie and VideoObject schemas provide cast, trailer link, rating etc for films industry.

Products: Offer, AggregateRating, Brand schemas help e-commerce with product pages.

Jobs: JobPosting schema helps job sites and boards markup available positions.

News/Publications: NewsArticle, BlogPosting schemas optimize articles and blog posts metadata.

Using industry-specific schemas where available ensures all necessary entity properties are covered comprehensively.

Benefits for Business Owners & Startups

As an online business owner, using structured data has several advantages:

• Draws more relevant traffic from search by improving content visibility and ranking.
• Leverages rich snippets to attract more user attention and generate clicks.
• Verifies business information to build credibility and trust with customers.
• Aggregates reviews and ratings to highlight social proof on search.
• Enables better discoverability of products, services, events using proper schemas.
• Prepares websites for voice assistant dominance in future.

By implementing structured data strategically, startups and small businesses can gain a competitive edge over others in their industry vertical. This helps increase website visitors, conversions, leads and overall growth for the business.

Pros and Cons of Using Structured Data

Pros:

• Improves searchability and visibility in search results
• Enables rich snippets and special formatting in search
• Helps search engines understand content better
• Verifies and aggregates information for users
• Prepares websites for voice assistants
• Draws more relevant traffic from search engines

Cons:

• Requires additional development and coding effort
• Regular testing and maintenance is needed
• Over-optimization can be seen as manipulative
• Not supported or parsed by all search engines yet
• Schema changes may require site-wide implementation
• Complete dependency on search engine algorithms

So in summary, structured data is highly recommended for most websites to maximize search visibility if implemented correctly as per guidelines. The pros generally outweigh the minor cons if done organically without any manipulation.

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Frequently Asked Questions About Structured Data

What is the most common type of structured data used?

The most common type of structured data implemented on websites is contact information using the Contact Type schema. This includes properties like telephone, address, email which are important for local businesses.

How long does it take for structured data to index?

There is no fixed time for structured data to get indexed by search engines. It can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks depending on the page crawl frequency and content changes. Ensuring internal links to those pages can help with faster indexing.

Is structured data only for HTML pages?

No, structured data is not only meant for HTML pages. You can implement structured data on other file formats used for pages like PHP, ASP, JSON etc. as long as they support embedding the required metadata in scripts tags or using HTML5 microdata attributes.

Do I need to mark up all pages with structured data?

It is not necessary to add structured data to every page on your website. The focus should be on markup only important entity and topic pages with relevant structured data. Titles, headers and footer pages generally don’t require structured data.

Can structured data hurt my site if implemented incorrectly?

Yes, implementing structured data incorrectly or over-optimizing solely for search engines can potentially backfire. It’s important any markup adheres to schema.org guidelines without any manipulative practices. Errors can also lead to snippets not rendering properly.

How often should I update structured data?

There is no set timeline for updating structured data but it’s recommended to review and update it at least once every 3-6 months or whenever there are significant website content/database changes. Timely updates ensure accuracy for users and search engines.

Does structured data work for international sites?

Yes, structured data is supported globally by search engines and works equally well for websites targeting international or localized audiences. You only need to mark up content in the same language and preferably select schemas in that language too if available.

Can I use more than one type of structured format?

Yes, you can combine both JSON-LD and Microdata formats on the same page to markup different entities. For example, JSON-LD for main entity and Microdata for other supplementary properties. It’s best not to mix multiple formats for the same entity on a page.

How do I test if structured data is working?

The Google Structured Data Testing Tool lets you paste URLs and debug any errors. You should also keep monitoring your structured snippets rendering in live search results. Tools like Semrush and Ahrefs also show previews of how rich snippets may look. Regular testing is important.

Will structured data affect my blog’s reading experience?

No, implementing proper structured data should not negatively impact the regular reading experience of pages in any way. The schema markup is usually added within hidden script tags and does not interfere with the visible content design or flow.

Is there a limit on how much structured data I can add?

There are no explicit limits set but it’s usually not recommended to over-optimize pages with excessive structured data not related to the main topic. Focus on only the most important and relevant entities. And ensure page load times are not significantly impacted.

Can I carry structured data through templates?

Yes, by using template programming and includes, you can define repetitive structured data like header/footer information just once and have it dynamically pulled on relevant pages. This avoids duplication and makes it easier to update common structured data entities globally.

Should I mark up pages without visible changes?

While visible enhancements are not guaranteed, implementing structured data correctly can still help search engines better understand page content even without new features displaying immediately. Improvements to search visibility may become apparent gradually as indexing catches up over time.

Does structured data affect featured snippets?

Structured data by itself does not automatically guarantee featured snippet placements, but it can support opportunities to trigger relevant snippets by providing the right metadata search engines need to surface those snippets. Proper implementation aligns with their featured snippet guidelines.

How do I get review schemas to show ratings?

For reviews structured data to show aggregate ratings rich snippets, you need to ensure the ratings are numeric values between 1 to 5. Simply providing review text without a actual rating property specified will not render the ratings box. Paging through reviews also helps trigger the ratings snippet.

Is alt text required for images in structured data?

While alt text provides additional context for images on web pages, it is not strictly required within structured data image objects. The image URL property alone will suffice for the image to be identified correctly in the data. However, adding alt text is still considered a best practice.

Will older pages see improvements from schema changes?

Search engines may require some time resources to re-crawl and recognize new additions of structured data to existing pages in the index. For timely effects, focus structured data efforts on newer high quality pages getting regularly updated. Over time, search bots will recrawl all pages to discover and utilize the latest schema implementations.

Are internal pages eligible for rich snippets?

Yes, internal pages deeply linked within your site are also eligible for rich snippets and improvements if they contain useful structured data about entities covered on those pages. Search engines analyze both landing and internal pages for markup. So optimizing relevant interior content can support the overall user experience.

Does JSON-LD need to be minified/compressed?

No, JSON-LD structured data does not need to be minified, compressed or reduced in size for search engines to recognize it properly. Longer human-readable code formatting is perfectly acceptable and aids debug ability. Magnification is optional and only recommended once testing is complete for production deployment to save bandwidth.

Why is no index used with some structured data?

The no index robots meta tag is sometimes applied along with certain types of structured data like reviews to prevent potential content/duplicate content issues. This ensures search crawlers don’t index the individual review/snippet pages but can still extract and surface the structured information within search features like knowledge panels.