SEO is a constantly evolving game. You have to come back constantly to revisit your old content, keep them updated and refreshed, and sometimes enhance it when Google introduces something new that can change the game. If you haven’t heard or used it much, structured data (or rich snippets) can really help boost your SEO presence, and in certain cases, bring you up to rank 0, which is the only thing better than ranking at number 1.
What is Structured Data (Rich Snippets)?
Rich snippets, or structured data, is simply enhanced search results. This encompasses many types of data, including star rating for movies and books, expandable content for FAQs, pricing information for products, dates time and location for events etc.
They surface more information regarding the actual content, and aims to provide more context and information prior to the user clicking through. This gives users more information to ensure this is the right link for them. Afterall, google’s job is to provide the best possible answer to our queries.
Types of structured data
There are currently 29 structured data types that you can use on your posts to enhance and provide google with more information about your content. They are:
| Article | Job Posting |
| Book | Job Training |
| Breadcrumb | Local Business |
| Carousel | Logo |
| Course | Movie |
| Covid19 Announcements | Product |
| Critic Review | Q&A |
| Dataset | Recipe |
| Employer Aggregate Rating | Review Snippet |
| Estimated Salary | Sitelinks Search Box |
| Event | Software App |
| Fact Check | Speakable |
| FAQ | Subscription and Paywalled Content |
| How-to | Video |
| Image License |
All these aim to provide additional context to the search result, and implementing them will be good in terms of enhancing discoverability. You can find out more on how to implement the various snippets on the google search overview page.
What structured data did for me?
Structured data currently doesn’t help with ranking, but what it does, is to make your search result a little more informative. Here’s an example.
Even though I was result number 2 on the SERP, with the added structured data, I had a lot more real estate (I would say double the real estate!) than the result above me. Users could toggle between the 2 questions I ad with the dropdown, and decide if the content was a better fit for what they were looking for.
Featured Snippet – The Holy Grail
And then there’s the featured snippet. The holy grail of snippets. This is where you rank as number 0! The hero that Google reckons provided the best answer to the search query you typed in.
As a featured snippet, you get maximum exposure in the search results page, right at the top, and often you’ll be the only result above the fold.
Adding structured data can seem a little daunting, because you’re adding html or JSON elements onto your post, which is why Google has come up with a structured data markup helper, where you can paste your url, and google will take you through the steps of creating the structured data to paste onto your posts.
SEO best practices
At the end of the day, Google is looking for the best content that answers the user’s query in the most complete way possible, so keep that in mind when drafting your content. Remember, structured data simply enhances what you already have. So make sure you have amazing content, then add in the structured data elements so Google can better read and understand your content to surface it.
Hope this helps you understand a little bit more about how structured data works, and how they can help you in enhancing your SEO efforts.
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