Get A Step Ahead Of The Competition By Adding Structured Data To Your Website

Structured data, for the most part, is highly organised information, that's presented in such a way that allows the below surface mechanics of search engines i.e. their algorithms to easily search for and find meaning from data presented on a web page. In the quest to bring their users the best search results possible search engines like Google use this well-defined and organized (structured) data to work out exactly what your web pages are about and the best way to index and display your website content in their search results, maps or knowledge graph.


Though there are many formats of structured data which in itself would require a lengthy article I will simply cover examples of structured data that I know can bring results to your website, for instance, if your website deals with events and showcases, search engines will be able to capture sections from your website and display them in search results, for example lets say a person searched for "theatre shows" in your area, in the search results a list of show time and dates can appear directly in the results. Similarly, if you sell products on your website and have facilities for customers to provide feedback or ratings, structured data can allow for this information to be displayed in a more prominent way, for instance say a person searches Google for "buy avengers age of ultron," in the search results a website link can display the ratings of the product, the number of reviews of the product and if its in stock and how much it costs (click here for a working example). As the search engines have a much better understanding of your website their able to display useful content from your website giving you an added visibility in search results that helps you stand out from the crowd. 

As long as the appropriate markup is added to your website, search engines can show rich snippets for a variety of things like:

A product including information like availability pricing and any reviews

Recipes which may appear directly in the Google knowledge graph or like the image below.

Reviews of things like a restaurant, movie or store

Events as I mentioned before, so showing the times, locations and pricing

Video so showing a clip and giving the relevant information

News Articles so showing an image, indicating who published the story and how long ago the story was published.

For an example of A rich snippet please see below




Here's an example of Google taking information from a website and using the information for its Knowledge graph, displaying the information in a highly visual format that's at the top of the search results, and when the link is clicked takes you directly to the website page.


Structured data is not just limited to search engines but is also used by social networks like Google+, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest which displays your information in a way that helps you gain interaction from the reader.
Structured data for social media works in very much the same way as it does for search engines, indicating what a page is, for instance is it a blog article, news, humor, etc. When a link from your blog is shared to a social network, there is an automatic process in identifying key images from your website and displaying them as large images. The blog article also displays the first few lines of the content on that page and when a person clicks on the image they are automatically taken to the relevant page on your website. This whole process is essentially based on improving user interaction by displaying your content in proven ways that bring interaction and traffic to your website.
I have employed structured data on many of my client's websites, and time after time I have seen traffic gains, often of more than 50%.

Below is an example of structured data used on social media websites Facebook and Google+





Looking at the images above, the link has been added to a post, the image from the actual website shows up as a large picture with a few sentences of text from the website, when you click on the link it automatically takes you to the website. As I mentioned before this is highly useful in gaining traffic to your website.

Reading through this post, the importance of structured data should be dawning upon you, as in the long run it really does help in bringing more traffic to your website, especially at a time when 570 new websites are created every minute!

We are structured data specialists, who have worked on numerous amounts of websites bringing the same consistent quality and results for all are clients, so you can rest assured that if you use our services your website will work!

The cost of adding structured data to your website is £250 if you would like to get this service today, please send an email to info@helpineeda.com or use the contact form and tell us the type of website you have.

Look forward to hearing from you.

David

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