A practical checklist for structured data
It comes up on almost every project, usually later than it should. Run through this the next time structured data comes up.
Search work compounds slowly, which is why it gets abandoned about two months before it would have paid off. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.
The checklist
- Schema markup tells search engines what a page actually is
- It powers the rich results that stand out in listings
- Validate it, because broken markup is ignored
- Someone is named as the owner
- There is a date to review it again
Why this earns attention
Schema markup tells search engines what a page actually is. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.
What this looks like day to day
Search engines are trying to answer a question, so the pages that answer questions clearly tend to do well. Three things worth confirming about structured data before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- It powers the rich results that stand out in listings — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.