Signs it is time to revisit structured data

It is rarely the thing that gets a project approved, and often the thing that decides how it goes. A few signals that structured data is due some attention.

Technical fixes remove obstacles; content earns the position. Both are needed and they are not interchangeable. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

The signals

• Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
• The answer depends on who you ask
• Schema markup tells search engines what a page actually is
• It powers the rich results that stand out in listings

Where to start

Validate it, because broken markup is ignored. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

In practice

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

None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.