Implementing and Validating Structured Data in an SEO Process: Criteria, Resources and Tools

Crawling Mondays. Hello there, welcome to a new edition of Crawling Mondays. In today's edition, I would like to share about structured data. Structured data provides a mechanism to specify about the meaning of our web content. It is supported by Google, Bing, and Yandex. They all use schema.org vocabulary for structured data, and that can be used, it can be specified through different encodings. The main ones are microdata and JSON-LD. And Google has confirmed that they prefer the usage of JSON-LD, although they support JSON-LD, microdata, and RDFa too. Bing also informed last year that they were also supporting JSON-LD. So today I will, I will share with you a few steps to make the most out of structured data, to validate, to prioritize tools to implement and facilitate the execution too. Because structured data doesn't only allow us to specify further the meaning of our content to search engines, but additionally can improve our opportunities to generate certain SERP features, to display additional snippets in search results that can even improve also the engagement of our users with our content and maximize our visibility in search results too. Additionally, Google has already confirmed that they will start supporting structured data to generate Google Assistant actions too. So it will be a win-win-win type of scenario. I will share much more with you today on how to make the most out of it. Let's take a look. There are some commerce errors that we see time and time again whenever we implement structured data. I end up getting this type of issues and that we can see in the Google Search Console because we haven't followed the specifications and we are missing some attributes. We are not specifying the properties with the attributes that are required. There are fields that are not included. So it's important to follow the guidelines on one hand, but also how it should be and shouldn't be used in general. Because if we go against those quality-related guidelines, we can end up generating manual actions as the one that I'm showing right now, right? And we want definitely to avoid that. How to avoid this type of issues while making the most out of it, right? So for me, it's about following a process to identify opportunities to implement, validate, and monitor our structured data. So because you don't have unlimited resources, it is key that you prioritize your efforts with structured data and you go to Google's own documentation and check if the structured data that is available is supported by Google is relevant to your content meaning. If this will end up improving your own search results for relevant SERPs, for meaningful content for you. If the impact of search results are for not only relevant queries, but queries with non-trivial search volume to really make an effort that will end up impacting as much as possible, right? And is it feasible for you to implement and follow the specified guidelines by Google. So to follow these rules, what I would recommend is that you go to Google documentation and Google Developers Structured Data Gallery. As you can see, they specify everything which are the structured data that they are supporting, the changes over time, if they provide examples, what is the feature availability, the data types definitions, and they provide even examples of schema, you can verify and check if this is viable for you to implement. If you have this information to include in schema markup that you will end up generating, and if you can comply with the rules, then of course you can go and use tools like Semrush, verify any SERPs that are showing snippets or features that are powered by structured data. You can even check those where you are already included in search results, where you or your competitors are already included, how the snippet is shown at the moment from your competitors, the one that you can achieve. And include also this validation when you are doing keyword research and identify which are the potential additional terms for which your competitors are not yet targeting that you can implement structured data for. This is how you will be able to prioritize this previous criteria that I shared before in a way that is impactful, that is meaningful, and you can allocate the required resources within your SEO process, your bigger SEO process, because indeed We have usually limited resources and you need to prioritize. Then it's about implementing structured data. I will highly recommend that you share with your developers the Google Codelabs for structured data, but also the tools that will generate the code snippets, especially JSON-LD ones that you can include in the head, or also Google has mentioned that they support in the body of the HTML. So for example, free JSON-LD generators by Merkle is one of my favorite ones. As we can see, they support different numbers of structured data types. So for example, I was generating here directly this how to structure data, but they support events, FAQ, job posting, local business, and you just need to add the information like this. And then you can just copy paste directly or test directly what the Google structured data testing tool, the Rich Results Test. There is also the Rank Ranger structured data generator. As you can see, even more types of structured data here for events, for job posting, for local businesses, for videos, for products, etc. And you can again easily copy or even directly test. And I have to say that there is this also very handy tool by Google itself, which is the Google Structured Data Markup Helper that will allow you to choose from different types of structured data and go to your content and start selecting, specifying which are the areas of your content that include or show properties of the desired structured data that you're specifying. There are also extensions and plugins for major CMSs that will also highly facilitate the implementation of structured data. So you don't need to go one by one within your platform, but this functionalists will add structured data based on certain criteria. So for example, I really like the Schema Structured Data plugin for WordPress. I use it myself for a couple of my websites. So for example, in this case for Why My Web Traffic Dropped, I have the how-to structured data and I just need to specify for which type of page or post I want the option to be included here, equal or not equal to this page here. And so for example, in this particular page, we can see how after I add the information at the bottom, I have the how to structure data that I can enable, disable, and I can directly fill the information directly here, right? So this is really nice for smaller websites, those websites that use WordPress, and also though more sophisticated type of solution for enterprise level websites, like for example Schema App here. It's amazing. It provides you Full support for all of the structured data types allows you to easily edit and add, as you can see here, in a very easy-to-use interface to add all the different structured data attributes that are required, the properties, to view directly the JSON-LD, to test with Google, to clone the items, and also provides many more functionalities to integrate the structured data that you have specified with any platform. So after we make sure that we have implemented structured data following Google best practices, both functional-specific implementation best practices as well as quality best practices, we need to definitely verify that the code is the right one before releasing any changes. And we want to do it so first for the major structured data types that we have used across the much more important pages of our website. And for that, we can even copy paste just a snippet of code of JSON-LD, for example, here in the script. And the Google Structured Data Rich Results Test. Select here, which is the Googlebot that we want to use for the test. See if it is eligible for rich results or not, and which are the fields that are missed. Any attribute that is being missed that is required, or if it is optional or not. Where is in the code if you want to change it directly even here. Really facilitating the implementation with the major pages. And then of course we want to run a full crawl in our test environment before releasing, and then of course another one after releasing, but also before releasing. And for that, we can use Screaming Frog. It provides structured data validations. For that, we need to select the structured data extraction here. We want to validate and extract JSON-LD, microdata, RDFa, and we want to validate against schema requirements and GOO validation also. We can select it here. And then we should go to structured data tab here to see which are the pages triggering errors or not. If there are any warnings, all of the types that have been identified, if these are the correct ones that we want to be implementing and showing, and go through the errors that are being triggered here in the structured data details tab below, right? So we can see if there's an image here that is required that Yes, it is required and I'm not specifying it. I'm not including it, right? Or if this item that I'm for which I'm using microdata for the breadcrumb, right? That I am not adding it as I should to comply with the specification rules, right? And I can go and troubleshoot like this. All the the errors are being shown before releasing, and of course I want to crawl again after releasing to make sure that everything complies the Google specification and schema rules. After releasing, it's also quite common to still see a few errors, even if you have gone through all of the process. So you want to go to the Google Search Console enhancements report. Of course, you want to request a recrawl. And after that, you will start to see the different structured data that you have implemented. For example, in this case for breadcrumbs and FAQ and see if there are any warnings or errors that are being shown there that you hadn't identified before and start fixing them by seeing here, which are the ones triggering actual errors and see which are the fields and go specifically, it will show the specific pages that are suffering from these issues. You can select directly the page and the page will be shown directly there in the sidebar with the code snippet, with the issue, the structured data issue directly. And then when you work around, when you fix it, you can also click the validate fix option here and see the evolution over time. It will not only inform us about the issue with structured data, but allow us also to validate the fix. You will be able to see here the evolution over time. Which are the pages that have passed already the validation, which are the ones still pending. And then also I will highly recommend for you to use tools like Content King and Lil' Warden here, in which you can specify custom elements that you can use to monitor, to monitor structured data. For example, here I have used certain XPath here to extract breadcrumb structured data or the auto rental that I have in these pages, the FAQ ones, the article ones. And be alerted whenever it is changed, because again, we never know when the changes on your website that might affect or negatively influence the way that your structured data is implemented. You are alerted whenever the issues happen before you even see them in the Google Search Console. And of course, Google also allows us to monitor rich results directly in the Google Search Console. I have to say that this monitoring though is still Very raw, very generic. I prefer to see the specific snippets that are generated by structured data. And for that, tools like, for example, SEO Monitor or Rank Ranger are amazing for this. And you can see, for example, if you are included at some point, even with your videos, with the video thumbnail, for example, because you're using the structured data for your video in your own, in your own website pages, right? And again, like this with SEO Monitor too, which is another tool that I, that I use to monitor the structured data. Effects with the snippets that are for which my website is being shown. So as you can see, it's about on one hand helping the search engines to better understand our content, also improving our website search results visibility in general, right? Not, not necessarily influencing directly our rankings, but just the way our pages are displayed and also positively influencing the engagement that we get from our users. So it should be a win-win-win type of scenario. Thank you very much, and of course, if you have any comments or any questions, you can leave them here below. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.