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A Beginner’s Guide to Understanding How Structured Data Works

If you observe web pages consist of free form texts. This might make them easy for humans to read but don’t work well for computers. To overcome this problem in the year 2011, Google, Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo collaborated to make a list of entities and attributes that their search engines would support.

This was known by the name Schema.org. Using this you can provide the information their search engines need to help understand your content better and provide relevant search results.

So schema markup is a code or semantic vocabulary that you can add to your website to assist search engines in showcasing more informative results for users. One can also create enhanced descriptions that appear in the search results.

As the vocabulary for the same is standardized, you can also add schema markup to your website’s HTML. You can enhance the understanding of your web pages for search engines to return richer and informative results.

Using schema markup one can exercise benefits such as easy storage, retrieval, analysis, and display. So, Schema Markup can help clear up things when Google doesn’t know if your page’s information is about a pop star or a comedy club.

In the age of RankBrain and Hummingbird, schema markup is extremely important. The quality of a search result is directly impacted by how a search engine interprets the context of a query.

To add to our understanding let’s browse through the difference between the preceding 3 terms.

Featured snippets are organic search results that appear at the top of a Google search. These are special boxes that reverse the format of regular search.

They are also known by the name “Answer Boxes” to answer a user’s question right away. The result or answer being “featured” adds additional to the recognition of a given brand.

The below-mentioned studies act as proof for the preceding claim.

‘Answer Boxes’ is a loose terminology for all the ‘Featured Snippets’. As the answer we observe is presented to us in a box we get inclined on referring the same as ‘answer boxes’. But this is a confusing term as many a time Google provides us with the quickest of answers without mentioning or linking the source below.

Here’s an example of the same.

You can avoid confusion by using the term ‘Featured Snippet’ when you observe the presence of a URL in the box. They are important for content publishers as they offer the desired recognition to a mentioned website.

Here’s an example of the preceding.

There are two types of snippets offered by Google when you make a particular search. The first is called a ‘normal snippet’ while the second being a ‘rich snippet’.

There are dozens of rich snippet types to choose from. Your first task would be selecting the type of rich snippet you want to get featured. Once you choose the snippet you can narrow in on the structured markup that can get you the same featured on the SERPs.

Let’s understand the same with an example. I was searching for an ‘Ice cream recipe’ which gave me a result with normal and rich snippets.

A normal snippet looks like this:

As you can observe, Google portrays the URL in black color with the Title in blue followed by a description of the page.

As opposed to this a rich snippet offers other essential information, hence known as a rich snippet. It can look like this:

Reviews, Recipes, Estimated Time, Calories:

As you can see the snippet offers URL, title, and description as a normal snippet. In addition to this, it also offers a photo of the ice cream, a rating of the recipe, time is taken for you to cook it, and the calories it contains.

As you perform different searches you will notice that there are different types of rich snippets provided by Google. It depends on your query and the type of content a particular website or company is providing.

Here is another type of rich snippet offered by Google.

Options: 4 options to choose from for a single search.

Organization: Snippets that offer information related to a particular organization:

Top Stories: Google news-approved websites get featured in the box named ‘Top Stories’.

Videos: Video markups can help Google understand more about your video content and get it featured on the top. Moreover, Google also offers a timeline for the first video.

Upcoming Events: Google can list time, dates, place, and more related to a particular event.

The best way for Google to show rich results or snippets is by adding structured data to your site. As we learned above structured data is a piece of code in a format that is understood by the search engines. If you have followed the right format then the search engine would use it to create rich results.

This brings us to the end of this blog. We learned a great deal about how the concept of structured data works. Let’s catch a recap of the same.

Understanding how structured data works best for your webpage can be a cumbersome task for a few. Here’s where the services of an IT services provider can come in handy. We are a Digital Marketing company. Our Digital Marketing team and content specialists can assist you in designing the content of your website.

Following the right practices can instantly increase your click-through rate and directly affect your SERPs. To learn more about structured data and how to plan your web content get in touch with us. You can sign up for a free consultation on our website or give us a call. We would be happy to help you. Thank you for reading.