Structured data: what is it & what can you do with it? Structured data allows web developers and SEOs to give meaning and context to content for search engines and their crawlers, allowing that content to be displayed understandably. In this article, I describe what structured data is, how you can use it, what it has to do with SEO and its importance in the future.

The term structured data is primarily a general term. Structured data – no matter in what context – is always present when it follows a certain pattern or format, that is when it is organized according to a certain schedule. The term schema is relevant in this case, which I will come back to later.

Since search engines deal with an almost infinite amount of information, the challenge lies in sorting and interpreting this data. Only when the information is sufficiently understood can it be used to best answer queries. Structured data enables website administrators to help search engines understand and interpret their website and information.

The Schema.org collaborative project

In 2011, the most prominent search engines joined forces and launched the Schema.org initiative. Google, Yahoo, Bing (Microsoft), and Yandex have now joined forces with this open-source project. The goal is to ensure that website content is uniformly labeled so that search engines can interpret it more easily.

Schema.org, in a sense, represents an ontology, that is, an all-encompassing conceptual scheme. For example, if I sell books in my online shop, I can mark individual product pages, so search engines know, “This is about [Book]!”

The entity [Book] usually stands for concrete literary works with specific characteristics. I can bring these characteristics closer to the search engines in a second step. I fill in a more or less extensive mask of properties, where each property represents a certain property. For example, it makes sense to define the Book’s title, the author, the number of pages, the language, the ISBN number, and the price, among other things.

A language is not complete with vocabulary alone.

So, with schema.org, the major search engines have built a constantly growing dictionary. To create an understandable language from this, grammar is needed, rules that make the language logical. Precisely this is complemented by the following markup languages: JSON-LD, HTML Microdata, and RDFa. Every grammar works differently, but they all offer me, as a website manager, the possibility to make my website easier to understand using structured data. What the pros and cons of these different languages ​​are and what is the best choice at the moment, I will discuss in more detail later.

As a website manager, what good is structured data?

Of course, it is nice for search engines that they understand the information better, but what good is that to me as a website manager? The answer to this is visually stronger search engine results. According to the title, description, and URL, these so-called rich results show other elements such as review stars, breadcrumbs, and other notable elements.

Google search for Most people are okay with normal and rich results

Figure 2 shows a screenshot of a Google search for Most People Are Good, Rutger Bregman’s book. There is immediately a difference between the first and second results, namely the rating stars and the number of reviews. Besides, the first result shows a clear breadcrumb structure. The best example is shown last at amazon.com, where the price and availability are also displayed. For a user, this is, of course, valuable information, which in any case attracts more attention than the other results.

Rich results

All these elements, so breadcrumbs, reviews, price, and availability, are fed by structured data. It happens that pages with structured data do not get these rich results. By contrast, pages that do not use structured data will certainly not get these rich results.

Another form, which can be especially important for mobile devices, are carousels. For example, the image below shows how Albert Hein has provided its kale recipe with structured data to be included in this carousel. Especially the probability of getting clicks in these types of carousels is much higher than in the normal search results.

Google search for ‘kale recipe’ including a carousel

By the way, don’t confuse these types of carousels with featured snippets, where Google gives a table, list, or text paragraph a prominent place at the top of the search query. Structured data does not affect these types of featured snippets.

Google search for ‘How do I cook an egg’ including a featured snippet

The fact that Google shows a featured snippet of a certain website here is solely due to the fact that Google has assessed the content of the page in such a way that it gives the best and most concise answer.

Google shows other possible ways to enrich the snippets to rich results using structured data in the Search Gallery.

How do you implement structured data?

First of all, you can distinguish between specifications for the quality of the data and for the technical implementation. One of the content’s quality requirements is that you may only mark unique content with structured data. In other words, only content created by myself or my users can I flag it. Also, the marked content must be visible to users. For example, if you provide a product with structured data, it must also be visible on the site. Also, you may not flag irrelevant or misleading content. This also applies to fake reviews or content that has nothing to do with the main content of a page.

Of course, it is a basic technical requirement that all content to be displayed in search results is accessible to search engines and their bots. This means that access should not be blocked by, for example, the robots.txt. You also need to use JSON-LD, RDFa, or Microdata for the implementation. To avoid possible errors and double marks, it is recommended to limit yourself to one of the three formats: JSON-LD, RDFa, or Microdata.

JSON-LD

JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is the latest method for labeling structured data. It is also the format that Google regularly recommends. One of JSON-LD’s biggest advantages is that you can integrate it – unlike other formats – independently of the rest of the source code of a website. Like the meta description, JSON-LD is implemented in the <head> section, which is the HTML document header. This makes it possible to adapt a page template or structured data completely independently of each other.

RDFa

The implementation using RDFa is based on a slightly different approach. Instead of combining the structured data into one – also human-readable – block as in JSON-LD, the data is distributed over the entire content of a page. RDFa is ‘HTML5 extensions’: existing HTML elements are extended and provided with extra information to mark structured data.

Microdata

HTML extensions are also used with Microdata. Microdata is, however, considered outdated and no longer actively developed. Nevertheless, I still regularly come across websites, also from customers who still work with Microdata. Hence it is relevant to mention this option briefly here.

Which format is best to use?

Have you not yet implemented structured data? Then I recommend using JSON-LD. Thanks to supporting from Google, Bing (since July 2018), and Baidu, this format is now ready for three of the big four search engines. Only the Russian search engine Yandex only supports Microdata and RDFa so far. If structured data has already been implemented using Microdata or RDFa, this can, of course, be maintained. However, it should be regularly checked how long the search engines will continue to support these two formats in the future.

Some of the markups have additional requirements that you should consider during implementation. These specific guidelines are all in the ‘Feature Guide’ in the Google Developers Portal.

Common mistakes with structured data

Due to the many different guidelines, it is easy to make certain mistakes in the markup. Even Google’s testing tool for structured data isn’t always helpful. Some common mistakes are easy to overlook, so here’s a quick summary.

Ratings or reviews (review snippet)

While using (third-party) widgets to implement ratings or reviews is generally not a problem, there are a few things to keep in mind. It is especially important that the review’s formatting always refers to the main content of a page. A common mistake is that a general review of a webshop is displayed page-wide via a widget, and can therefore also be seen on individual product pages.

Since this review relates to the webshop itself, Google can consider this as spam not to the individual products. In addition, reviews that do not come from the website itself should always contain a link to the source. It must therefore be clear to users and search engines where these reviews come from.

Invisible content for users

Flagged content must be visible on desktop and mobile devices. The user must be able to recognize where the content is located on a particular page, which is shown by a rich result in the search engine pages. The only option you have as a website administrator is to place content behind a tab, which opens to users after a mouse click. The condition is, of course, that the search engine bot can also read the tabbed content.

Misleading or Inappropriate Content

This may seem obvious, but the marked content must be relevant and fit a particular page’s content. For example, an all-inclusive trip to the Foo Fighters concert cannot be marked as an event. Marking the concert itself, on the other hand, is a correct implementation of the event markup. In short, be as specific as possible when tagging or marking structured data.

Is structured data relevant to SEO?

A frequently asked question from customers is how relevant structured data is for SEO. And this question, like many SEO questions, you can answer with: it depends. In most cases, the implementation of structured data has no direct influence on a page’s position in a search engine. Google and co. do not judge a page differently if it is marked with structured data. But in many cases, rich results increase the click-through rate because they provide more information and simply make the results stand out more from the regular results. Search results with review stars, for example, stand out more than results without such a markup. In this case, an indirect relevance for SEO can indeed be established.

In addition, John Müller (Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google) recently emphasized during a webmaster hangout that even when a certain type of structured data does not contribute to obtaining rich results, it can still help Google understand certain content.

Another special feature is the results of articles, recipes, and some other search functions. If your content is correctly tagged, it has the chance to appear in special boxes, such as the recipe carousel. Such carousels are usually at the top of the first results page – and ranking high in Google is ultimately the goal of search engine optimization.

Structured data tools

Fortunately, there are numerous tools for structured data that can help webmasters with the implementation or even check the rich results gained.

Google’s Codelab

If this topic is relatively new to you, Google’s Codelab will get you started pretty quickly. Based on practical examples, you walk step by step through the various options. Note: Currently, Google’s Codelab for structured data is only available in English.

Schema Markup Generator

The “Schema Markup Generator (JSON-LD)” from Technicalseo.com is suitable for both beginners and advanced users. It contains all the usual markups, and you can create a valid structured data code in a few clicks.

Rich Result Test Tool

One of the essential tools for structured data testing is Google’s own Test Tool. Previously, this was mainly the Structured Data Testing Tool, but Google recently announced that this tool would be discontinued. It is not yet clear when, but Google has offered a replacement in the Rich Result Test Tool form. 

The problem with this change is that the Rich Result Testing Tool only performs tests on rich results, where the Structured Data Tool also checks certain flags that do not (yet) lead to rich results. These are annoying developments for many SEO’ers and webmasters. The question is whether there will be a replacement or whether changes will be made to the Rich Results Test Tool, which also allows you to check and validate other structured data markers.

Javascript bookmark

For those who often want to check different URLs for structured data, the following JavaScript bookmark is a good choice for the browser. To do this, you must first create a new bookmark in the browser. However, instead of a URL, enter the following code:

javascript : ( function () { window.open ( ' https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/#url= g ' + encodeURIComponent ( location.href )) } ) ( ) ;

Then when you surf to a page you want to check for structured data, all you have to do is click on the bookmark. A new browser tab will immediately open the corresponding URL in Google’s Test Tool.

Structured Data – conclusion

Since the introduction of structured data, new data types are added regularly. What is currently in beta and could potentially be added by default to schema.org in the (near) future can be found here. 

For example, Google added the speakable content type in August 2018 and has supported it ever since. This type of structured data is intended for content that speech assistants and smart speakers can read easily. At the moment, the ‘speakable property’ is only intended for publishers. This is expected to be available for all websites in the future.

Google is likely to expand the number of structured data options in the coming years. In addition, the inclusion of structured data no longer only affects the classic search results in Google search results pages, as the example of ‘speakable content’ shows. It enables websites to position themselves in other search areas and thus increase their own traffic.

This blog post is about performing a good SEO keyword research and how to find SEO keywords for your next website or project. We will go through this process step by step with you, so don’t worry if you don’t know everything yet. This blog post will help you find the most suitable SEO keywords for your SEO campaign, so without further ado, let’s get started.

When conducting a keyword search, many bloggers often use only one source. So they choose Google Ads, Uber Suggest, or SEMrush. These SEO tools all have an enormous database, however… Each of them draws only from one source, with one type of data. It becomes much more interesting when we combine these tools and can see data from different sources.

Step 1: Look at various search sources in search of SEO keyword suggestions

Google Ads

Google Ads has a rather commercial approach in determining what the right keywords are. They know very well that the user is willing to pay per click for keywords that will give their business more conversions. At the same time, Google Ads will not show other keywords that are less likely to convert.

Google Suggest and Google Related

In the SERP you can always get inspiration for your keyword research. When typing a search term in the Google search field, you always get suggestions for possible keywords. In addition to Google Suggest, you will also see some keywords related to your search term at the bottom of your screen.

Keyword Rankings Graph

Another popular option is SEMrush, in which the recommended keywords also rank for the pages for which the keyword that you were typing.

Topic modeling based keywords

Where do you get words and phrases that often appear in the same document as those in which your keyword is contained? For this, Alchemy API is a good tool to try.

Other tools

Another well-known and interesting SEO tool to find keywords is of course UberSuggest. Moz came in April this year with a successor to Open Site Explorer, Keyword Explorer.

Step 2: Select keywords that correspond to different types of search intentions that are in consultation with your content strategy

Imagine, for example, that you have a bicycle shop with a broad online range of racing bikes.
Specific keywords will be suitable to reach those people who are about to make a purchase. Possible keywords in our example: buy a road bike, bicycle parts.

Another group of SEO keywords exists for those people who are still at the very beginning of their purchasing process. They do have the intention to buy over time, but will not immediately result in a conversion for your shop. It concerns people who are looking for more information. In our example, this would be the best bike manufacturers, the advantages of a carbon bike.

If you want to find SEO keywords, you have to dive deeper.

A third possible category of keywords could be the potential influencers. We think of keywords like “best cycling fairs in London”, “most popular cycling magazines”, “5 most interesting cycling blogs”…

Of course, depending on your content strategy, you can perfectly achieve a different layout.

Step 3: Identify Keyword Metrics of keywords

In this phase, we will note the parameters for each of those keywords. What we do is we look at the search volume, how much competition there is for the particular keyword, and thus how difficult it will be to rank at the top of the SERP. To estimate the CTR opportunities start looking at the other issues that are shown in the SERP (videos, ads, info in the right sidebar), a score that expresses the personal interest that the keyword has for your business. The sum of these scores gives us an idea of the potential of each keyword. We can then arrange the keywords according to this score. You can do this with GoogleAds, Wordstream, KeywordTool io, Excel, Google Spreadsheets or Keywordexplorer.

Step 4: determine which keywords you will target and which content you will have to create for this.

The keyword with the highest score will be the keyword you will target for your homepage. For other keywords with a high score, you will create a new page.

Then you can set up a survey with your target group of cycling enthusiasts to hear from them what they find important when they are looking for a new bicycle or equipment.

This step-by-step plan and the tools provided will help you to find your SEO keywords in a very targeted way. Good luck and as always, post your comments below!

SEO tips and a step-by-step plan for more traffic to your online store

As an eshop owner, you have many different tasks. One of these is search engine optimization (SEO). After all, a beautiful shop with a great product range is of no use if no one can find it. And what could be better than free visitors via Google and other search engines? Saves you a lot of money on advertising costs. Because I know that your time is scarce and you want to achieve quick results, in this article, I will give you several top tips and an SEO step-by-step plan for more traffic to your online store.

Step 1 – Do a keyword analysis.

Search engine optimization of your online store always starts with a thorough keyword analysis. By first researching which keywords you can best optimize your online store for, you can work in a targeted manner and save yourself a lot of time. 

Make a list of web pages within your online store that you want to optimize. This is often the homepage plus the category pages. If you have a rapidly changing assortment, the product pages are not the priority for SEO. If there is little turnover in your products, you can, of course, also include these pages.

For each page, think about which keywords your target audience would enter into a search engine. Then enter these keywords in the Keyword Planner of Google. This shows you exactly how often a specific word or word combination is searched and how much competition there is for each keyword. In addition, the keyword planner also provides suggestions for other keywords. This makes it easy to determine the best keywords for each web page.

Be specific

A common word like ‘clothing’ has many monthly searches, but the chances of you offering exactly what the searcher is looking for is slim. A keyword like ‘buy kids clothes online’ has fewer monthly searches, but these searchers are much more likely to purchase intention.

Step 2 – Write SEO texts.

You now know which keywords your target group is looking for your products on. Then it is important to include these keywords on your website. You do this, among other things, by writing SEO texts. Write a unique and extensive SEO text for each page in your eshop, in which you return the keywords for that page several times. 

Please do not overdo it. You write these texts in the first place for your visitors! To provide sufficient information in these texts, inspire the reader and encourage him to click through and place the products in the shopping cart. Place a title and subheadings in these texts and also use the keywords. Give each subhead a heading tag.

Step 3 – Meta title and meta description

With many (website and) online store software, you can enter the meta title and meta description per page. This is the text that will be shown in the search results.

Think carefully about these texts. Write a short and clear title containing the main keyword. This lets both visitors and search engines know what a particular page is about. You can then provide more information in the meta description. Also, include a call to action to encourage visitors to click on the link.

You must write a unique title and meta description for each page. Please don’t make it too long: use a maximum of 64 characters for the title and 140 to 160 characters for the meta description. This will prevent your text from being cut off halfway through.

Step 4 – Optimize photos and images.

You can also optimize the photos and images in your shop. This ensures, for example, that your products are found via Google Images. Give each image a good file name. Not a number or abbreviation, but a brief description of what is in the picture. Use the keywords in it. Make sure the image is the correct size before uploading it to your online store. This benefits the speed of your shop.

Title and alt attributes

Finally, you give each image a title attribute and an alt attribute. The title attribute is the text that appears when you hover your mouse over the image. The alt text is the alternative text of an image. This is shown if the image cannot be displayed. Choose descriptive and straightforward alt and title attributes and use the keywords there too.

Step 5 – Search Engine Friendly URLs

The URLs are also important for SEO. Provide short URLs that contain the most important keywords. This makes the website clearer and more indexable for search engines. Long URLs that contain many numbers or punctuation marks can deter visitors. A good URL structure for your online shop is, for example, loreleiweb.com/product-categorie/product/

Step 6 – Use link building for more traffic to your online store

You carry out the first five steps of this SEO step-by-step plan in the eshop itself. But SEO for your online store also takes place in part ‘outside the home.’ This is link building: 

generating links from other websites (backlinks) to a specific website, to achieve a higher rating for a search engine for keywords relevant to that web page.

Link building: how do you go about it?

Try to get links on other websites for every page you want to optimize. You can approach this as follows:

• Look for websites, blogs, forums, etc. that match your products and ask the owner to link to your shop.
• Guest blogging is also an option. You then write a blog for another website (whether about your own eshop), where your eshop link is placed.
• Send out press releases regularly. These are often included by different websites, which can give you some nice links.
• Be active on blogs, forums, and social media. Respond to updates and articles from others. On blogs and forums, you can often enter your website with your response, so that every response will give you a backlink.

Go for quality with SEO for your eshop.

It is important with link building that quality is more important than quantity—better 1 good link on a popular and relevant website than ten links on irrelevant shitty sites. Use the keywords as the link text. So do not use ‘http://loreleiweb.com’ as the link text. If you want to be found on ‘Wooden photo frames,’ this must be the clickable text. Do not only place links to your homepage, but also to deeper pages, such as the categories and product pages.

In everything you do: SEO in mind

The search engine optimization of your online store is not something that you do once and that you can then cross off your to-do list. In order to remain easy to find, you have to be constantly working on this, in everything you do in your eshop. If you add a new product (category), do keyword research right away, immediately write good SEO texts, think about the name and tags of the images, check what the URLs look like, and try to arrange several backlinks.

Hopefully, you now have a good basic knowledge with which you can get started with the SEO for your online store. How quickly you see results depends on how well you apply the above tips and the popularity of the keywords and what the competition is doing.

How to find SEO keywords? – Conclusion

Finding, selecting, and analyzing the right keywords for your website or campaign is the first step in a successful SEO process. An analysis of keywords (also called search queries, search terms or keywords) not only provides insight into the search behavior of your target audience but also offers opportunities for new content/markets.

Despite SEO being around for years, most people are yet to understand how it works fully. As a result, they end up making mistakes, which negatively impact their SEO. Luckily for you, you can work with an SEO reseller who can offer guidance and teach you a thing or two about SEO.

While you have the option of getting help from an SEO consultant, you should also avoid making the following mistakes. 

1. Duplicating content

Duplicate content in SEO means that the content appears on more than one web page.  While you might not get jailed for posting duplicate content. It is not worth it. Why? Google bots will be confused on the pages to index if the content is similar. What that means is duplicate content will not work for your SEO. 

To avoid duplication issues, it is simple: embrace authenticity and try as much as you can to post content that no one else has.

2. Not doing keyword research

One of the mistakes that most webmasters make is not doing keyword research. What that does is slowing down your SEO. Without keyword research, you will not be able to drive relevant traffic to your website. Keyword research is aimed at discovering phrases that most visitors use while searching for a product or a business.

The analysis will help you know the kind of keywords that your competitors are ranking for, most used keywords and the ones that are relevant to your target audience.

3. Having a poor web design

The moment you think of setting up a website, the first thing that you should do is find a web developer that will do a great job. Use experience is critical when it comes to SEO. Whether or not your web architecture is easy to navigate will determine how long the users will want to spend time on your page. 

A good design will keep the visitors coming for more of your content.

4. Ignoring mobile responsiveness

Most web owners are yet to realize just how crucial mobile responsiveness is. About sixty percent of the search queries originate from mobile devices. What does that tell you? Most of your customers will use mobile devices to get to your web pages. You need to, therefore, make it easy for them to access your website by making it responsive to mobile. 

One of the ways through which you can achieve this is by optimizing your page loading speed and compressing your images while at the same time maintaining their quality.

5. Having unrealistic expectations

Most people who have no clue about how SEO works have the notion that it can work overnight. Well, that is not the case. For you to get the results that you desire, you need to work. SEO is all about hard work and consistency. It is the only way that you can get a good ROI.

Above are just some of the common mistakes that most people make in SEO. By avoiding them, your SEO will certainly head in the right direction.