Structured Data for SEO Defined
Structured data for SEO provides clues or additional information about the content of a page. For example, if a page features a how-to series of steps or a recipe, it will be noted under structured data. A search engine such as Google or Yahoo uses data labels and snippets of structured data that will appear on the HTML codes of your page. This detailed information about your page will help Google in tweaking how search results appear in the result pages in search engines.
How it Works
In order to learn how structured data works, you will first need to know how websites appear in search results. In order for your website to show in search results, a spider, crawler, or bot from a search engine such as Google, will need to index your site. When bots crawl your site, they collect information such as the text and images to its structured data. This information is then indexed.
The information will then be interpreted using its algorithm. It is not very easy to decipher a website. This is why search engines continuously update their algorithms. Structured data can help make the work completed by bots and search engines much easier. Structured data allows you to provide information about your page, instead of guessing what your website is all about.
The information used can then help a person when they are searching online. For example, if a person is searching the web for an apple-pie recipe, they probably have a few things that they didn’t include in their search initially. Maybe they need an apple pie recipe that only takes 30 minutes. They most likely want something that is going to be tasty as well. SEO structured data will provide all of this information for a simple search such as “apple pie recipe.”
Why Structured Data is Beneficial for SEO
When it comes to SEO, the goal is to improve the visibility of your website in search results. Having your website on any page except the first page is not fun. 75% of users keep their search to the first page of results. This is why it is beneficial to take advantage of everything structured data has to offer.
Structured data helps to:
- Explain the layout and content of your website- All the information that Google needs will be used to interpret your page. This is why it is essential to provide Google with a complete breakdown of your page, because it can make a difference in your search result rankings.
- Maximize your real estate- Structured data won’t cause your website to skyrocket to the first page of the search results, but it will give you a chance to maximize your presence in search results. You could also look into using a hire team to help out with other SEO factors.
- Preview page for users- Google wants to make the user experience a very important part of its ranking algorithm, no matter if the user is searching for a plumber or a blog post about lawns.
Conclusion
With structured data, your business now has the opportunity to optimize your website for users and search engines. This additional optimization can greatly improve your rankings in search results and help increase the traffic to your website.
Google or Yahoo will include information such as each recipe’s user rating, cooking time, and calorie count. Google would not be able to provide this information without the use of structured data. Instead, Google would have to guess whether the details of a website have information such as cooking time, etc.
