Structured Content: The Ultimate Guide

Bing, Google, and many more have full support. Plus, it’s now a well-defined standard that is becoming increasingly relevant due to the advent of a new class of applications. Applications of many types (not just search engines) can utilise explicit data about relevant topics to build knowledge and contribute to performing functions.

As with all website features that are consumed by search or answer engines, it may take some time for any changes to be reflected in the engine’s results. First, a change must be found and then processed, and then the information must be chosen to be used. You can request individual engines to update their data. But it’s not always known how many applications are using your data.

Structured data, in particular, is a larger entity to create. Combining sources from multiple pages into a representation of a single entity. This increase in the number of sources causes some delay, and having few sources will not cause processing to go any faster. But it allows many websites to present data points about a particular entity and have them aggregated. For example, the reviews can be taken from many third-party websites and a first party website to create a total picture.

https://schema.org

TLDR;

Structured data provides better exposure of your website contents to users who don’t click through to your website directly. It helps search engines and third parties improve their results by providing explicit information on topics that are defined by a standard. Information on the topics that engines are interested in can serve as a concise showcase of a particular page or section of a website. It can also help the engine understand content on the page that is not included within the structured content by relating it to some topic that it does understand. Structure data is designed to relay information about the URLs, which then provide further information or actions associated with a particular topic. It can be thought of as a database with a direct association to a web page and may link to other important pages.

Case studies and examples

Adding structured data can enable search results that are more engaging to users and might encourage them to interact more with your website, which is called rich results. Here are some case studies of websites that have implemented structured data for their site:

Rotten Tomatoes added structured data to 100,000 unique pages and measured a 25% higher click-through rate for pages enhanced with structured data, compared to pages without structured data.

The Food Network has converted 80% of their pages to enable search features, and has seen a 35% increase in visits.

Rakuten has found that users spend 1.5x more time on pages that implemented structured data than on non-structured data pages, and have a 3.6x higher interaction rate on AMP pages with search features vs non-feature AMP pages.

Nestlé has measured pages that show as rich results in search have an 82% higher click-through rate than non-rich result pages.

For example, the Google Business listing you see on the map when you search, and in any Google search results, will use the structured data from related websites. Instead of the data from an account or data that Google has guessed.

Given that the website provides organisation data, it can also provide other data like opening hours information, product listings, galleries, and many more.

Common structured data features

The following is a selection of relevant third-party applet definitions for most businesses:

• Product and Merchant Listings
• Organization
• Profile Page
• Review Snippet
• Search Gallery
• Events
• FAQ
• Job Postings
• Local Business

Read more on structured data here - in the introduction to structured data.

The standard allows you to submit lots of data, which engines call to when looking for information on a business. And they encourage you to enter as much as possible wich can enable the growth of the data points.

A good example of a piece of data that is actively used by many applications is opening hours. Instead of inputting this data directly into all of the applications, your website can provide this information, and any third parties will find the information on your website. If a third-party application is serving data to a customer, they can reach out to your website to get the latest information before displaying it.

One useful piece of data that many third parties support is the ability to specify links to offers or products. As an offer is about a product, engines are able to infer a great deal of information about the offer itself, the intention of the content, and the actions users may want to take.

What is structured data in the context of a website?

Test your website with an online testing application: https://search.google.com/test/rich-results

The world wide graph of the web

A graph is a term used to describe the relationships between people, places, and products. It is a way of visualising how different entities are connected. In the world of technology, a graph is often used to represent data in a way that is easy to understand and analyze. In the world of SEO, it’s how crawlers may derive information on a particular topic from a website to use in their applications.

One example of how graphs can be used is in the context of local businesses. When you search for a local business address, the results can show you not only the address itself but also the agents who work at that address. This is possible because of the way that the graph represents the relationships between different entities.

Overall, the graph is an important tool for understanding complex data sets. By visualising the relationships between different entities, it becomes easier to make sense of large amounts of information.

Source of Truth

A source of truth is a term used to describe a data set that is considered authoritative and reliable. In the context of technology, this often means that the data is centrally managed and controlled. This is important because it allows third-party applications to use the data without having to worry about inconsistencies or inaccuracies.

One example of a source of truth is a database that contains information about a particular set of products. This database might be managed by a single company or organisation, but it can be used by a wide range of third-party applications to provide users with up-to-date information.

Overall, having a reliable source of truth is essential for ensuring that data is accurate and consistent across different applications and platforms.

Formats

As applications get smarter, less time will be spent searching for content, and more impressions will happen in many third-party user interfaces. While your page may have a clear call-to-action, any third-party applications require an explicit place to retrieve such information that is relevant to a particular page. The increasing number of features and platforms and the wide range of current standards are making stores of explicit data like this more important. Web pages are simple files and make a great place to store this information in an easily accessible format. This allows engines to all consume a single source of truth.

Using all available formats, like Open Graph, Twitter Cards, and Schema, is critical.

Open Graph, Twitter Cards, and Schema are all formats that are used to represent data in a way that is compatible with different platforms and applications. These formats are important because they allow developers to create applications that work seamlessly with different systems and services.

For example, Open Graph is a format that is used to represent data on Facebook. Twitter cards, on the other hand, are used to represent data on Twitter. By using these formats, developers can ensure that their applications work well on both platforms.

For information on supporting all formats, please also see our meta information guide.

Robustness

Robustness is a term used to describe the ability of a system to handle a wide range of inputs and outputs. In the context of technology, this means that a system should be able to handle different kinds of data and perform a wide range of tasks.

One example of robustness is a search engine that can handle queries in different languages and return results that are relevant and accurate. Another example may be a multitude of third-party applications using data from your source of truth. Popular applications like ChatGPT or other artificial intelligence may call out to get structured data from your website to answer a query. What events has hosting.snowdon.dev hosting recently? Does hosting.snowdon.dev have any coupons? Does Apple have a website? Give me the telephone number for the support team at hosting.snowdon.dev.

All of this is done should be done from a single source of truth, and as new applications are created, your data continues to be automatically integrated with them. This does not prevent data from being aggregated, but data must have authoritative source.

Overall, robustness is an important characteristic of any technological system. By being able to handle a wide range of inputs and outputs, a system can be more useful and effective for users.

Adding structured data to a website

To do this simply add a JSON-lt payload in the schema format within the head of a HTML document. Or instead, markup your HTML DOM elements.

How is structured content different from a website?

A website and structured data serve different purposes, despite both being related to the online world. A website is a collection of pages, images, videos, and other forms of multimedia that are hosted on a server and accessed through a web browser. It is a platform for publishing content, interacting with users, and showcasing products or services. On the other hand, structured data is a way of organising and presenting information in a standardised format that can be easily understood by machines.

Although a website can contain structured data, the two concepts are not interchangeable. A website is designed for human consumption, while structured data is designed for machine consumption. Structured data is a form of metadata that describes the content of a website in a way that can be easily understood by search engines, social media platforms, and other web applications.

Structured data is often used to enhance the visibility and effectiveness of a website by providing more information about its content. This information can be used to create rich snippets, knowledge graphs, and other types of search results that provide users with a better understanding of the content on the website.

In contrast, a website is designed to be visually appealing and engaging to human users. It can feature a variety of multimedia elements, such as images, videos, and animations, that are designed to capture the attention of visitors and keep them engaged with the content.

Overall, a website and structured data serve different purposes, but they can work together to create a more effective and engaging online presence. By incorporating structured data into a website, businesses can improve their visibility and attract more visitors while providing a better user experience.

The Importance of Structured and Unstructured Data in Website Development

In the world of website development, data is a crucial component that helps developers create effective and efficient websites. When it comes to data, there are two types: structured and unstructured. While structured data is well-organised and easy to manage, unstructured data is more complex and requires a more nuanced approach.

Structured data refers to data that is organised in a specific format, such as a specification. It is easy to manage and analyse, and it is typically used for specific purposes, such as tracking sales or customer data. Structured data is also easier to search for and retrieve, which makes it a valuable asset in website development. Structured data comes in the form of a predefined format or semantic HTML that enriches any webpage with generic structure.

On the other hand, unstructured data refers to data that is not organised in a specific format, such as text files, images, or video files. Unstructured data is more complex and requires a more nuanced approach to processing and analyzing it. However, unstructured data can also provide valuable insights into customer behaviour and preferences, which can be used to create more effective websites.

When it comes to website development, structured data is essential for creating effective applications. For example, structured data can be used to create a database of product information that can be used to power an online store. This data can be easily managed and analysed, which makes it easier to create effective product pages and search tools.

Unstructured data, on the other hand, can be used to create more personalised experiences for website visitors. For example, blog post content and comments can provide valuable insights into customer preferences, which can be used to create more effective marketing campaigns. Since search engines may only infer structure from HTML, they can gain little structured information other than the basic layout elements and the unstructured text contents. Many efforts are made to associate a piece of unstructured data with some content. For example, the alt attribute of an anchor element may add information to a hyperlink, but any association of that link to the particular product listing must be inferred. Its association is not structured. Many types of unstructured data may benefit from defining explicit structure.

In conclusion, structured and unstructured data are both important components of website development. While structured data is essential for creating effective applications, unstructured data can provide valuable insights into customer behaviour and preferences. By taking a nuanced approach to data management, website developers can create more effective and efficient websites that deliver a superior user experience.

Tips for Using Structured Data with Common Content Types

Structured Data Product and Merchant Listings

One of the most relevant pieces of data that websites offer are products listings. To get better rich results for these within answer engines, structured data can be added for the products. Once the structure data is captured in the answer engine listings, it can refer back to a particular webpage on your site. When a user interacts with a product listing, they may click through the rich result for a product and go directly to its own page. The website can then use its own checkout procedure to capture any conversion.

See the Google Introduction to Product structured data article for more information on the how they consume your data.

Answer engines and structured data

With AI applications enpowering answer engines, many new ways of acquiring information about entities are becoming popular. Answer engines like Google have become more common and advanced.

As these engines are building databases for their users to query, having structured content that targets these platforms can improve your impressions. An example of this might be looking for the opening hours sequence instead of a contact page containing your opening hours. And displaying the user’s opening hours within their own interfaces. Typical search engines already include answer engines (they provide data to the widgets), but many new types and interfaces are becoming available. Paying attention to your business’s domain and looking for any interesting ways users are searching for your product may pay dividends.

As businesses and search engines start rolling out new interfaces to display information for queries that can be disambiguated, many components of structured data can take prominence in the results of the answer engine. This should provide a richer experience to the user within the answer engine and help to navigate the web pages for the user.

Using the structure of entities related to a query, the answer engine can display information relevant not only to a particular section of a website but to multiple related websites as one cohesive piece. By understanding the links that are displayed and directing the user to different related parts of the web, links can be to a distinct website about a department of an internal web hosting organisation or to external pages providing information about a part of the organization. And many more, with new interfaces being added regularly.

Reviews

Using services like reviews.io you can manage your website’s reviews from within its interface. Review services offer many ways to easily integrate their features with your website. Or simply use it to gather reviews. Many other services also allow review submissions, and any website can push reviews to an entity’s structured content. Common providers include Yell and Google Business.

Any reviews will be linked to your entity through structured content and will be aggregated from all sources when displayed within an answer engine interface.

Google Business: website integration

• Find Google Business Profile
• Getting started with Google Business Profile

After finding your profile, look for a link to leave reviews. This simple hyperlink can be shown to users and provides a simple call-to-action to a leave-a-review process. However, the Google review process isn’t great. You may also consider implementing a more complete user flow. For example, to provide users with a coupon after submitting a review,.

FAQ

Using a free tool like the logicballs.com faq generator, I may take a webpage and generate some questions from its content:

• What is marketeer.snowdon.dev?
• How can marketeer.snowdon.dev help improve my marketing strategies?
• Is marketeer.snowdon.dev suitable for small businesses or only for larger companies?
• Are there any specific industries that marketeer.snowdon.dev caters to?
• Can marketeer.snowdon.dev integrate with other marketing tools and platforms?

Using the questions, create definitions of the question and the answer to declare structured data for the relevant topic. Once indexed, FAQ structured data allows search engine applets to easily use the data to enrich applets with up-to-date information of major importance. This allows Google to pick exactly which data to display and states that certain data explicitly relates to a particular topic. Search engines often display lists of websites with enriched content higher than sites without.

This is a very powerful tool to provide valuable information to users who receive an impression on any search engine but who don’t visit the website directly. Often, they can be taken directly from existing content, but domain knowledge from various experts in the business industry, web development, artificial intelligence, and SEO can all offer insights. If you are contracting a freelancer, it would be best to have an expert in all those fields. If you are doing all aspects yourself, paying attention to all the experts is a necessity. Currently, many benefits can be acquired from leading your industry with cutting-edge technologies or social media campaigns.