Why Structured Data Is Important for Your Website

When you implement a strategy for your website’s search engine optimization (SEO), you’ll need to make sure you have all of the essential ingredients. One of the most important elements of SEO is structured data. When your web pages include strategic structured data, you’ll be able to dramatically improve your search engine results page (SERP) ranking and draw new traffic to your company’s website.

What Is Structured Data?

Structured data is code you integrate into your website to improve SEO. The code comes in a specific and pre-existing format and is written in a way for search engines to easily read and interpret. On the consumer-facing end, it results in better previews that give them a clear idea of what to expect if they click the search results. Essentially, this data organizes the information found on the web page using a template related to the subject content and displays it in a user-friendly manner for people who type in a search.

Allows Search Engines to Organize Content

Structured data can significantly improve your website’s SEO by allowing search engines to organize your website’s content in a way that makes sense to users. When you it in your code, your search engine results will display what’s known as rich snippets, or rich results.

For instance, if you implement a content strategy for your boot company and post a blog about how to polish your boots, the rich snippet will automatically give the user a breakdown of the number of steps, the title of each step, and any information you include on how long it should take. This rich snippet of information makes the result more valuable to users and will thus be prioritized by search engine algorithms, specifically Google.

Integrating structured data code into your existing code will also make the URL more SEO-friendly and the preview description more useful.

Integrating this information into a web page won’t automatically create the rich snippet. You can only insert the code and hope Google will pick up on it and optimize the SERP preview of that page. However, it’s easy to find the pieces of code you need, and integrating them into your code will give your website a good chance of having the rich snippet created.

Using Structured Data

The pieces of code you need are readily available to you. By using Schema.org, you can find the most useful pieces for your website. By searching through their database, you can narrow down the optimal piece of code for your specific page and alter it to give your website the best chances of getting a rich snippet.

In addition to your keyword research, content strategies, and website maintenance, including structured data will give your SEO a boost and give your website a better chance at climbing in the search engine rankings.