Structured data

Structured data is a way to describe a website/web application, allowing search engine robots to better understand the content being viewed. Structured data is playing an increasingly important role in SEO, and its proper implementation can significantly improve CTR in organic search results. Below you will find basic information about structured data and the practical use of this technology in IT projects.

Structured data, schema org, schema markup

Structured data on the website is a concept closely related to the issue of "rich results", which means additional information about a given url, visible in search results. As an example, consider the search results for the phrase "apple pie", shown in the screenshot below.

As you can see, Google didn't just display the title and description meta tags in this case, as in most searches. Besides the two basic meta tags, the SERP also shows the recipe's rating, the number of votes and the time it took to prepare the dish. It is structured data that is responsible for this way of presenting content to the search engine. Most "rich snippets" can be coded into any web application design, and the major search engine providers have collectively created extensive documentation on how to implement them.

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How to implement structured data?

Most popular content management systems create structured data automatically, according to a predefined scheme. This is usually a functionality available natively for a given engine or can be activated with a plugin. For example, when adding a blog post on the WordPress platform, we can expect the CMS to add structured data code specific to blog articles, causing rich results to be displayed. For these types of pages, this is usually information on publication date, author or category assignment.

Implementing structured data in an application written in "custom stack" can be done in several ways. The most popular and recommended by search engines is the JSON-LD ((JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) format. In a nutshell, this involves placing a properly prepared script, describing the components on the page, which will make it easier for the search engine robot to index the link and display the enriched data in search results.