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Lesson 1, Topic 6
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The Basics of Structured Data

02.02.2022
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What is structured data markup?

Structured data, also called schema markup, is a type of code that makes it easier for search engines to crawl, organize, and display your content. Structured data communicates to search engines what your data means.

The importance of Structured Data

Structured Data helps search engines better understand your content.

For example, let’s say you just published a blog post that featured a chili recipe. Without Structured Data, Google and other search engines have a hard time understanding:

  • How long the recipe takes
  • Which images are of the recipe itself
  • The list of ingredients
  • Steps

Enter: Structured Data.

When you add Recipe markup to your page, you tell search engines:

“The recipe takes 45 minutes”

“This is the list of ingredients”

“Here’s a picture of the dish”

And if you play your cards right, Google will show off this data in the search results as a Rich Snippet.

Implement Structured Data With Schema

When it comes to Structured Data, most websites use Schema.org markup.

That’s because Schema is supported by all the major search engines (including Bing). And as you’ll see in a minute, it’s pretty darn easy to set up.

If you have a recipe, you could add structured data for:

  • Cooking duration
  • Nutritional information
  • ingredients
  • Recipe instructions
  • And, more…

All you need to do is find the type of markup that you want to use on Schema.org

Schema.org – Recipe

markup your content using the guidelines on that page

Schema.org – Recipe guidelines closeup

And if you want to add your Structured Data Markup without the help of a plugin, you can use Microdata or RDFa. But it is highly recommended using JSON-LD. That’s because JSON-LD is the easiest way to add Structured Markup to your page. Without JSON-LD, you need to manually add Structured Data to the HTML of your page.

Manually added structured data

But with JSON-LD, all of your Structured Data is packed into a little piece of JavaScript code that goes into the <head> section of your webpage:

JSON-LD packages all of your structured data

Test With The Structured Data Test Tool

Your last step is to make sure your Structured Data is set up correctly.

Fortunately, Google launched an AWESOME tool that makes this step an absolute cinch: The Structured Data Testing Tool.

How to use The Structured Data Testing Tool

Either pop in a live URL from your site: 

Google Structured Data Testing Tool

or copy and paste HTML:

Google Structured Data Testing Tool – Code snippet

And hit “Run Test”:

Google Structured Data Testing Tool – Hit "Run Test"

Google will then show you any Structured Data that it finds on your page.

Google Structured Data Testing Tool – Results

And if the tool finds anything funky, they’ll let you know:

Google Structured Data Testing Tool – Errors and Warnings

One thing to point out:There’s no guarantee that Structured Data will result in Rich Snippets… even if you have everything here set up PERFECTLY. In fact, Google makes this super clear in their documentation: Using Structured Data correctly maximizes the odds of getting Rich Snippets. But it doesn’t always work.