Structured Data: Speaking the Language of SEO

In the world of search engines and Google, where your website ranks and how it displays can have a huge impact on the incoming traffic volume for your site.

The average click-through rate for the first Google desktop search results is 32 percent. And for mobile sites, the click-through rate for the top-ranking search result is still an impressive 26.9 percent.

That means that top-ranking search results consistently get more views and more traffic—and potentially more business.

But here’s the rub… the way Google has started displaying results makes it even more challenging to get in front of your audience. Most search results now display paid ads above a “local pack” of listings AND national firms competing strongly for the top several search result placements.

In other words, you can find your listing shoved down the search engine results page, even when you are doing a traditionally “good” job with your SEO.

That’s where structured data comes into play.

As of this writing in late 2021, structured data is one of the most powerful ways to quickly improve your ability to rank well in organic search results.

While 50 percent of brands have not implemented structured data yet, doing so has provided some impressive results for those that have.

According to Search Engine Journal, implementing structured data can lead to as much as a 400 percent increase in organic traffic. One client that added structured data to their site saw 160 percent growth in impressions and 150 percent growth in clicks. Another experienced 41 percent growth in impressions and 28 percent growth in clicks.

Adding structured data to your website can have a powerful impact on your business. Keep reading to learn more about structured data and your SEO scores, or talk to us about how to get started.

What is Structured Data?

Structured data describes a website using a vocabulary that makes sense for search engines. Using it makes it easier for search engines to understand the content on your site.

This vocabulary is called schema or schema markup. It changes your content into code that search engines can process. The search engine uses this code to order and display search results with better specificity and richer descriptions.

Essentially, structured data is a kind of code that makes it simpler for search engines to crawl through your site, organize your content, and display it on a search results page. It synthesizes what your data means.

Without this schema markup, search engines have a much harder time making sense of your data. Schema markups can be used to indicate things like articles, events, reviews, recipes, products, people, organizations, medical conditions, and more.

Here’s an example:

You likely already have contact information for your brand listed somewhere on your organization’s website—it’s probably placed somewhere on your website’s footer. Of course, this makes sense for the people who visit your site and know where to look to find your contact information, but it’s not as easy for the search engine bots that crawl your site.

Search engines have to work a little harder to figure out what your raw data means. Without schema, they have to filter through all the data on your site.

But if you use schema markup, you have a way to tell search engines that your contact information is your contact information. As a result, your site becomes easier for the search engines to make sense of, with all the attendant benefits.

How Structured Data and Schema Markup Boost Your SEO

Google and other search engines each have their own carefully curated algorithms that they use to provide their users with the best possible results to match their queries. Because structured data is so helpful for users, these search engines implement certain incentives for organizations to incorporate structured data, including:

• Rich search results like styling, images, and visual elements
• Rich cards, a variation on rich search results that appeals to mobile users
• Enriched search results like interactive features
• Knowledge graphs that provide additional data on the search results page
• Carousels of multiple rich results from your organization
• Rich results for accelerated mobile pages (AMP) to appear in carousels on mobile devices

All of these eye-catching enhanced search results draw attention to your organization and can help boost your click-through rate (CTR) and bring more traffic to your page. And they completely transform the way your search results display on a search engine results page (SERP), bringing more visual focus to your brand compared to your competitors.

Plus, improving your organic CTR is another critical tool to improve your search engine rankings as a user behavior signal. What’s more, implementing this kind of structured data is a forward-thinking approach to help your site prepare for the future of search algorithms as these algorithms migrate towards hyper-personalization for users.

Relish Studio: Making Schema Happen

There are quite a few intricacies when it comes to implementing schema markup to your site. Schema is a whole taxonomy of code formats that are helpful for large search engines to understand, but require some finessing to function properly.

It requires knowledge of markups like JSON-LD (Javascript Object Notation for Linked Objects), Microdata, or RDFa (Resource Descriptive Framework in Attributes). There are tools to help organizations implement this code, but they are fairly technical and can feel like learning a new language.

At Relish, we understand that your time is a valuable resource. Rather than spend energy and effort muddling through the language of schema and learning to communicate with search engines, we can help you implement structured data to improve your SEO results, drive traffic to your site, and boost the potency of your website.

To learn more about how we can help you with your structured data needs, schedule a call with our team today.