Structured data markup is not just for Google (but does it always make sense)?

Structured data markup helps Google’s ranking algorithm to understand your content more accurately. If you add structured data to your website, your pages may become eligible to be shown with an enhanced appearance in Google’s search results. However, there is a risk to using structured data markup on your website.

Why should you use structured data markup?

Depending on the topic of your website, it can make sense to use structured data markup on your web pages. If your web pages contain structured data markup that is related to the content of the page, Google can show the web page with additional elements on the search results page:

Rich result on Google's results page

It’s likely that such a result gets more clicks than simple listings without images. Bing also supports structured data markup. For that reason, it can make sense to use structured data markup on your website.

Structured data markup can also lead to fewer website visitors

It is important to use structured data markup that matches the content of the page with the markup code. If you use inappropriate structured data markup, or structured data markup doesn’t match the on-page content, your website might get a manual penalty. Do not try to manipulate the search results with fake markup code.

There is another problem that can be caused by structured data markup: if your structured data markup code provides too much information, people will get everything they search for on Google’s results page. That means that searches won’t click through to your website. Some webmasters learned that the hard way.

For example, this webmaster saw a massive traffic drop after adding FAQ structured data markup code to her website:

Using structured data markup for FAQs can make sense if people would have called your customer service number if they didn’t see the answer on Google’s result pages. If you want to sell something, it’s usually not good if people don’t click through to your site.

Google’s John Mueller didn’t have a problem with the fact that people stayed on Google’s results page:

How to create structured data markup code quickly and easily

Both Google and Bing support JSON-LD for structured data markup. That means that you do not have to use the more complicated microdata code anymore. The easiest way to create structured data markup code for your website is the Rich Results Creator tool in SEOprofiler:

Rich Results Creator for structured data markup

Create structured data markup code now

Structured data code on your web pages can increase the number of visitors that your website gets. The Rich Results Creator tool helps you to create JSON-LD code quickly and easily:

Create structured data markup code

Tom Cassy

Tom Cassy is the CEO of SEOprofiler. He blogs about search engine optimization and website marketing topics at “http://blog.seoprofiler.com”.