Google also captures structured data for events, TV episodes, book reviews, movies, and software applications. This includes more detailed elements such as image carousels and breadcrumbs for navigation. The list is expected to grow in the future. You can track the complete list of markup available on Google in Google's Search Gallery.
How to use structured data to improve your website's SEO
Follow these six steps to see how you can use structured data to improve your SEO.
1. Identify rich results for your keyword set
Do you see results that differ from the usual URL+title+description when you perform a search on your main keywords? These are rich results. It may include images, additional lines of text, and stars, like the ice cream example. Search marketing tools usually show the presence of rich results for your site and keywords, giving you a better picture.
Pay attention to the types of rich results you see to understand where you can improve your site. This type of analysis is typically performed in an SEO audit that you pay a provider to perform.
2. Find more schema markup relevant to your site
Now you have a good understanding of the types of markup you can create on your site. Visit schema.org to explore all the markup types relevant to your site. If you're not a developer, it might be a little complicated to understand.
3. Try Google Markup Tools
An easier method is to apply Google's markup tools directly to your site. You can apply it to individual pages if your site is in one of the following major categories: articles, book reviews, datasets, events, job postings, local businesses, movies, products, question and answer pages, restaurants, Software applications, or television episodes.
If your page belongs to one of these categories, you can apply markup visually and extract the HTML file to insert into your page. This is a viable solution if your site is relatively small and all relevant information is readily available via the Google interface.
4. Define the content of the markup tag.
Now that you know the types of markup you can do on your website, the next step is to define the content of your markup. For ratings, it would be 5 to indicate a 5-star rating. If your content isn't rich, there's no guarantee that your website's traffic will improve.
Content can consist of individual information on individual pages within a website, or it can consist of data extracted from a database and inserted into many pages. If your data is likely to be updated, be sure to document your website update process and set reminders to refresh the page when data changes.
5. Code it or use a plugin
And now it's time to call the webmaster. If you use Google Markup Tools, you can download the HTML code that is inserted into your web pages. This can also be done manually on each page. If you're using a CMS like WordPress, you can find plugins to input values.
For more complex integrations, consider developing this website. In a database-driven CMS, this is a one-time integration and the data is automatically updated when you update the database.
In reality, there are many ways to code structured data markup. Search engines prefer a format called json-ld. Facebook uses something called OpenGraph, and other formats have funky names like his Microdata and RDFa.
6. Validate your markup code
Once your website is updated with structured data, you can perform validation to ensure that your website is functioning properly. Google created the Rich Results Validation interface for this purpose.
Structured data example
We started with a great ice cream example, but let's see what it looks like in practice. I opened the page to view the source code. This code works in any browser. In the code, you can see how references are made to the schema.org markup protocol, and below that you can see the code responsible for the great stars on the list.
Get ready for the Semantic Web
Structured data isn't just for SEO. Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networks use this to find suitable photos and display them when you add links to your posts. Structured data is what hides behind the pages and improves the web. Some people call this the Semantic Web. When used correctly, it can have a huge impact on your SEO strategy and help other web services better represent your website.