Getting started with structured data
The version of this that works is simpler than the version most people imagine. A short on-ramp to structured data for teams who have not touched it before.
Technical fixes remove obstacles; content earns the position. Both are needed and they are not interchangeable. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.
Why it matters
Schema markup tells search engines what a page actually is. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.
Your first week
- Find out what is already in place
- It powers the rich results that stand out in listings
- Change one thing and measure it
Validate it, because broken markup is ignored. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.
How to tell if yours is fine
Search work compounds slowly, which is why it gets abandoned about two months before it would have paid off. Three things worth confirming about structured data before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Validate it, because broken markup is ignored — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.