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What is Structure Data in SEO And Why It’s Important?

Before digging deep into everything about structured data and their utility in SEO, we should know this –

✂ Using structured data has helped businesses increase their page conversion rates by three times

✂ A boost of 35% monthly organic traffic has been reported by businesses that use structured data

Well, we can clearly see how businesses are benefitting from structured data and improving their search results and traffic volume. So much so, the Google organic conversion rate has also risen 4.5 times than earlier due to the use of structured data.

So, the question is – what is structured data?

Well, we know SEO or Search Engine Optimization is all about allowing search engines to first understand and then crawl the website’s data for improving rankings. We also know search engines like Google use an algorithm to decide on crawling and indexing data of a website.
The algorithms are basically a set of rules which keep changing over time for giving preferences to websites that are adding value and using ethical means. Structured Data is one such change to search engine algorithms.
After all, not only users but also search engine bots also find organized data to their liking, which is where the utility of structured data comes into play in true sense.

Basically, structured data (also known as schema mark-up) is a code used by search engines in crawling, organizing and displaying website content in a manner that helps users find information easily, smoothly and quickly.

In addition, structured data is the information included in the HTML to provide more details to search engines about the page content. After all, search engines can properly understand information only when it’s structured as machine-readable data.

To benefit from structured data, one has to use scheme mark-up and add the right code to the web page. Using schema (from schema.org), one can let Google know the type of content on the page.

Using schema, you can clearly tell whether the content is article, recipe, how-to, product page or anything; you can also add details specific to the content so that search engines can deliver value to their users.

Here are some of examples that show the use of structured data in web pages –

 

Benefits of Structured Data

There are some great benefits of using structured data, so you should first know how it really helps before leveraging it for your website.

Here are some of benefits –

1. A boost to page relevancy
Search engines will first grasp, understand and know the contents of websites before crawling so that they can display relevant results against searches. Site owners can thus use structured data and provide search engines with the detailed information about the contents of their site. This is how algorithm will find it easier to match the content to right searches.

2. Better performance in search results
Using structured data can help you get an edge over others in search engine result pages. After all, there is a lot of competition among websites to rank in the first pages of search results. You can thus implement structured data and add everything like reviews, ratings, images etc. that can help your site grab the user’s attention easily.

3. Google Knowledge Graph
Knowledge Graph is a pioneering tool from Google developed to collate all the information, facts, events etc. so that it can be presented in the form of a knowledge graph. You can benefit from structured data and fill the knowledge box of the business.

4. More information to target audience
Marketers have started using structured data to achieve better results with their paid efforts. They now use it to add more information with their ad copy so that the target audience can be provided with better information. This can also have a positive impact on the conversion rates.

5. Effectiveness with e-mail marketing
A lot of marketers now use structured data to provide more information to their customers through emails. E-commerce players in particular can utilize schema mark-up and send more details to customers about their products and services.

How Can I Use Structured Data?

You should know that structured data uses HTML code. So, your first need to familiarize yourself with html and then think of benefiting from structured data. However, you can also use structured data with minimal coding thanks to the availability of some third-party tools. These tools come with html tags which let search engines mark-up website pages easily.

And yes, site owners can also trust Google to make available freely how to implement data.

Here are the tools to build structured data –

Data Highlighter Tool
This tool can help you highlight the different parts of the website that have data or information. After that, the data can be tagged with labels so that search engines generate snippets.

Structured Data Markup Helper
This tool is also helpful for working on web pages and HTML email templates. Web masters can just login and follow the steps meant to first identify and then tag the right section on the site. In the end, copy and paste the code on the site, or save it.

WordPress Plugins
Site owners can benefit from two WordPress plugins, namely, WP Rich Snippets and Schema App Structured Data, to keep their pages and posts up to date without writing any code. They can also use schema.org plugin to create structured data in simple steps. This plugin can actually also give a preview of the way pages appear in search engine result pages.

Structured Data Testing Tool
After creating the required HTML code for the structured data, you should then go ahead and test it. This tool from Google will come of great help in identifying risks and them fixing them effortlessly. After fixing all the issues, you can paste the final HTML code on the site.

You can clearly see how structured Data help a lot with your website’s ranking. You can thus hire the services of a top digital marketing company and benefit from structured data.