Structured Data helps Google and other search engines understand your website, which is important if you’re going to rank in results.
Including structured data provides explicit information about a page.
Structured data, also called Schema Mark-up, is a standardised format for providing information about a page and classifying content. This is typically written using Scheme.org vocabulary. Structured data details everything from product prices and stock availability to company contact details, customer reviews, delivery information and more.
Essentially, in the context of web development and SEO, structured data is all the important information on a page organised in a way that makes it easy for search engines to parse.
Is Structured Data a Ranking Factor?
Not directly. Structured data is not a direct ranking signal for search engines, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important. This documentation is especially key for eCommerce sites.
One way Google ranks sites is relevancy to the search term. For instance, if a user searches “cheap floor tiles”, Google return sites most relevant to that query and the user intent. In this case it will most likely be eCommerce sites selling floor tiles. If Google crawlers can read your site as an eCommerce store selling floor tiles, you will have more chance of ranking for this keyword.
Structured data make the subject of each page explicitly clear to SEs. While the algorithm doesn’t feed this information directly into its ranking factors, it contributes signalling stronger relevance for the keywords you are targeting.
“Allowing Google to easily see the exact information on products you want to sell is always going to be beneficial.” – Scott Hunt, Head of SEO at eSterling.
Structured Data AND Featured Snippets
Featured Snippets and Rich Snippets are ubiquitous across Google’s results pages in 2024. These are spaces in SERPs where additional data is highlighted, aside from the traditional paid and organic listings. For instance, snippets may be a paragraph from the page pulled through into the SERP to answer a specific question. The introduction of AI Overviews earlier this year is changing the use of featured snippets in ways we don’t yet know, but it’s likely that Structured Data will play a role in how AI results are put together.
Rich snippets extend to much more than just providing answers – the following images show some of the ways that Google uses information from your website to make search results more helpful.
Product categories
Product Price
Stock status
Product Specifications
Aggregated Reviews
Structured Data -> More Detailed SERP Appearance
Displaying as much information as possible next to search listings is a proven way of improving click through ratio (CTR). The more information you provide, the more likely it users will click through to your site.
Some sites have seen as much as 30% increase in CTR after implementing structured data, so it is worth investing in. In any industry, 30% is a major boost to both traffic and conversions.
Users will also enter your site with more information on the product they want to purchase than they would otherwise. This can help with navigation once on the site, so users find what they want. In this way, structured data can improve your search rankings, bring more users to your site, and improve conversions.
If you are interested in improving your site with structured data markup, please get in touch with eSterling now. Our expert web design and SEO teams can implement structured data on your site, boosting your rankings, traffic and sales.
