Schema mockups and microdata – how they affect SEO?

Best coding practices for your websites

You’ve probably heard about HTML tags and structured data many times. If you are a web developer, you should know them well. As a reminder, the tags are e.g. <h1>, <p>, <img> etc. Today we will focus on how to pass the information contained in these tags to the browser by using WordPress CMS so that it can be an effective way of search engine optimization and as a result boost organic traffic on a web page. Read the article to find out how to deal with structured data?

How does the structured data work?

The user visiting the website focuses on reading the content, thanks to which he knows well what the website is about. This is not the case with browsers because the browser cannot understand the content. That is why we have to use structured data, which is primarily used by Google robots and other search engines like Bing or Yandex. Thanks to the fact that the data is organized, search engines can better understand it. In effect, that helps search engine algorithms provide the best results to users. This strategy is a part of Search Experience Optimization (SXO) and affects both search engine optimization and user experience at the same time.

Structured data, also known as metadata, are data schemas that allow you to easily collect information about your site as recommended by schema.org. They are especially important for e-commerce platforms because they help bring crucial information about products directly to search engine algorithms. You should adapt data types to the type and subject of the website. Remember that if you implement structured data yourself, you should carefully analyze what information is needed on your website. Too much unnecessary information may mislead browsers and, consequently, lower your position in search engines. Also, it’s worth remembering that Google in its technical documentation prefers using all microdata in JSON-LD.

Types of structured data

Although there are many tags and you can write a lot about them, I would like to discuss a few most important of them. I will focus on these tags which have impact on search engine optimization. Despite that, there are hundreds of schema tags, Google and other search engines support only a small part of them. Most of them directly affect how search engine results are depicted. In this way, it helps to boost the click-through rate by attracting the attention of users.

Breadcrumbs Schema

Each of us knows what breadcrumbs are. They indicate the hierarchy of pages in the navigation. For example, when Google sees breadcrumbs, it can display a friendly link. Example below:

Local Business Schema

This type helps us to present our company, opening hours, headquarters, contact details, or Google business cards. It’s very helpful to promote web pages in local search engine results especially combined with Google My Business.

FAQ Page Schema

We use FAQ Page Schema for a subpage with questions and answers. Thanks to it, the search engine can display answers to the most frequently asked questions to us directly in the search results. This type can affect search engine looks most distinctively by widening a space that is holden by a specific URL on a list of results and providing the most important information directly to a user.

An example of correctly implemented data based on validator.schema.org

Article

It is a data type reserved for articles, e.g. blogs or news outlets. They allow you to display, for example, the author of the entry or the publication date. In some cases also additional picture miniatures can appear next to specific results. To make this happen the article must be illustrated by a photo or graphic and a link to it also must be placed in markup.

Product

One of the most widely used schemas. It is a structured data type used in online stores and it’s a crucial element of search engine optimization. It contains information such as product name, photo, description, price, availability, opinions, product code, etc. As a result, additional information about the product may appear in the search engine. This is one of the most distinctive types of search results.

How to implement structured data in WordPress?

One of the most popular formats is the JSON-LD format which is preferred to use by Google guidelines. We can implement it using the Yoast SEO Premium plugin. There are of course numerous different WordPress plugins that can provide similar results but in the case of Yoast it also can effectively help in other search engine optimization tasks and that makes it one of the most used WordPress plugins. It’s also very easy to use and you don’t need any specific IT knowledge to set it up by yourself.

RDF and Microdata are also used formats in structured data implementation but at this time they are considered by Google as obsolete. You can find more detailed information on their implementation at schema.org and also Google technical documentation for developers.

As we can see, structured data allows us not only to entice potential customers to enter the website by displaying more information but also contribute to a better evaluation of our website by Google algorithms. This type of search engine optimization can noticeably increase organic traffic and help you to reach more potential customers. Is it worth putting them on your website? No doubt yes!

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