SEO has gone a long way since websites took shape. Gone were the days when they were all about keywords. Now, search engines became a lot more complex, yet better.

“How,” you ask?

With the help of structured data.

Structured data made it into the realms of SEO when Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and Yandex created a standardized list of attributes in 2011. This was called Schema.org, the precursor to the structured data we have now.

However, many still don’t know what structured data is.

Fortunately, we’re going to talk about that here as we’ll show you what it is, what it’s for, and how it can be used for SEO.

What is structured data?

Structured data for SEO refers to Schema.org.

A simple definition of structured data is it’s the most common approach to marking structured data for SEO purpose.

However, it isn’t the only one as others like Microformats.org that’s often used for product reviews.

Structured data improve a search engine’s understanding of specific content. This helps them analyze sites and check if their keywords are relevant or not. It makes ranking sites easier.

Benefits of Structured Data in SEO

Better search results

Structured data improve search engines’ search results. It does this by having richer results that feature images and customized designs. Results can also have interactive features that make user experience more immersive. Knowledge graphs can also be created to support a brand’s description.

Increased click-through rate

Expect an increase in click-through rate because enhanced search results are more visually appealing. They also provide better and more information to people, increasing their chances of opening your page.

Versatility

SEO practices continuously adapt to trends. With this, it’s expected that SEO, together with search engines, will become more personalized and visual in the future. Using structured data, however, makes personalization easier because of its customizable features.

Uses for Structured Data

Knowledge graph

Structural data is used to fill the Knowledge Graph Box fond at a SERP’s right-hand side. You can also edit its information and make it relevant to your blog.

Better context

Provide better content to products, articles, reviews, videos, and star ratings using structured data’s customization feature. Google is also developing an action markup that lets users take action from SERP. This comes in handy when publishing content or scheduling posts.

AMP

Sites that use Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) need structured data so that its pages appear in rich results. It’s an example of structured data. This also puts your pages on host carousels and Top Stories. You need structured data if you want to make the most out of your site.

Social cards

Social-specific markups such as Twitter cards and open graphs might seem irrelevant to your marketing campaign. However, they are still crucial to your blog’s SEO score. They are visible in search engines and are even considered as page-level annotations.

Thus, it’s important that they get proper representation in the form of structured data.

AdWords

AdWords ads benefit from structured data as it makes adding information easier. This makes it easier for people to understand your ad because of its clearer description. This then increases click-through rate which is vital to your blog’s health.

What about Blogpatcher?

Blogpatcher is a tool you can use to identify if your blog uses structured data.

It’s a nifty SEO tool that lets you run a page analysis to see its SEO score based on the most relevant on-page factors including structured data.

You can sign up for a free account with limited features and credits by clicking here.

Once you’ve signed up, enter the URL that you want to analyze. You can also enter its target keyword to generate a more precise page analysis report.

Once finished, you will see the aggregate score of the page divided into different variables.

To analyze the page’s structure data results, click on Structured Content.

The higher your score, the less you have to worry about your structured data. It means that you optimized your page for this SEO variables.

If not and your score is low, Blogpatcher shows you which sub-factor you need to work on and how.

The tool spoonfeeds you all the information you need to know in creating optimized content. There’s no additional research or legwork that you need to do. Just follow the tips and you’ll be off with an optimized and better version of your page!

Outside of structured data, Blogpatcher advises you on ideal topics, niches, or articles to write. This can even help solve SEO issues you might be facing.

Conclusion

You no longer have to just deal with keywords or backlinks to guarantee your blog’s success. Now, you need to consider lots of things — including structured data. Nonetheless, it is the future of SEO.

It might sound complicated and too technical, but it’s totally learnable. You might not get it at first, but you’ll eventually get the hang of it. You just need to keep doing it regularly because your blog’s success depends a lot on this.

While it might be convenient to ignore technical SEO, it’s still not an option because search engines are becoming stricter today. This is especially true knowing that bogus sites and low-quality blogs are on the rise.

However, you can avoid that hassle with the help of structured data. You need to know the ins and outs of structured data if you’d want long-term success for your blog.

Just be passionate in what you’re doing, and always remember that your hard work will eventually pay off. You won’t have overnight success with SEO as well as with structured data.

Start implementing it to your site as early as now and see solid results in the long term.

Related posts:

Everything You Need to Know About the Google Algorithm Update 2019

Modern SEO Techniques You Should Be Implementing

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