What Exactly Is “Structured Data” In SEO?
Structured data is a format that is standardized to serve pertinent information about a web page to the search engines. It gives information to the search engines on what the page is about. When the search engine is capable of understanding what the page is all about, it is much more capable of offering up the right rankings for respective search engine queries. This type of data is typically used by various search engines in the area that is known as ‘rich snippets’ in order to improve the end user’s search experience.
How Structured Data Impacts SEO
Rankings Boost
While the structured data is not a ranking factor used by search engines, it can help indirectly. It isn’t going to provide a direct boost, but it can give search engines a better understanding of what the page is centered on in order to boost relevancy which can have a positive impact on rankings.
Higher CTR
The structured data is very likely to enhance the visual appeal within the search engine results. This can be especially true when you are talking about either products or reviews. This is likely to improve the click-through rates of the different websites being featured.
Many More Conversions
Having a higher ‘click-through-rate’ can result in having a lot more visitors to your website. Because of this, it can drive more traffic to your site which can improve conversions.
Better Authority
You will find that search engines look for what they should be featuring in the search engine rankings. Thus, having an enhanced result in the search engines will end up making the website look much more credible in the eyes of those who are relying on the search engine rankings.
What Is Likely To Be Marked Up In Structured Data?
There are all kinds of different types of information that are likely to be marked up in the data. You will find a summary of the different things that can be marked up on Schema.org.
This type of data tells the search engines what your page is about. Thus, whenever a search engine finds this data, it will determine whether or not it is good enough to be featured on the search engine results. You will find Google and other search engines taking a lot of variables into account including the authority of your site, the location, and many more.
Keep in mind, Google will ignore structured data and they won’t apply it for the home page of your website no matter how well it is implemented. This was something that came straight from the mouth of a Google employee.