Structured data is one of the most effective ways to increase the visibility of your website content and increase the sustainability of your SEO as Google implements regular updates to the SERP environment. Over the last five years, many of Google’s most game-changing SERP features have been driven by the use of structured data from across the web. Google for Jobs, Google Shopping, featured snippets, how-to instructions, recipe cards, knowledge panels, and other rich snippets all serve content from sites with structured data.
So, when we think about how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can compete in today's ever-evolving SERP landscape, time and time again, well-implemented structured data is what makes the difference.
In this blog I’ll explain the following:
- What is structured data?
- Why should SMEs prioritize structured data implementation?
- How do you identify which structured data is best for your SEO strategy?
- Strategies for adding schema to your site
- How to measure and demonstrate the impact of structured data
In my experience, well-implemented structured data is effective for websites of all sizes and in all verticals. For my own clients, schema implementation has enabled growth, improved performance on search and created opportunities to reach new audiences.
- For an established national retail brand with a thriving social media following, schema optimisations contributed to a 50% increase in organic conversions within a month. And six months on, the improvements we made to product markup, organisation, and blog schema had helped drive a 230% increase in organic conversion value.
- For a local recruitment site, we combined niche targeted schema and sitemap optimization to increase both organic clicks and impressions by over 80% each, within four months.
- For an international B2B retailer, improving existing schema formed the basis for marketing strategy that enabled us to grow our tally of ranking