Glossary
Glossary•Updated 2026-08-28

What Is Structured Data? SEO Guide with JSON-LD Examples

Structured data is standardized code (usually JSON-LD) added to a page that describes its content in a machine-readable format, helping search engines understand and display it accurately.

Explain It Like I'm 5

Structured data is a translation of your page for robots. Humans read 'Delicious pancakes, 20 minutes, serves 4.' Structured data says the same thing in robot language: name, cookTime, servings. Robots reward translations they can trust with fancier search results.

Understanding Structured Data

Structured data is a standardized vocabulary, most commonly schema.org, written in a format like JSON-LD that tells search engines exactly what a page contains: an article, a product, a FAQ, a how-to guide, or a definition. Instead of inferring meaning from raw HTML, crawlers can read explicit labels for the title, author, date, price, steps, and entities on the page.

Google supports three formats: JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa. Google recommends JSON-LD in most cases because it lives in a single script tag separate from the HTML, making it easier to maintain, though all three formats are treated equally as long as the markup is valid.

The visible payoff is rich results: enhanced listings such as FAQ dropdowns, star ratings, breadcrumbs in the SERP, and product prices. Structured data also feeds entity understanding, which increasingly matters for semantic search and AI-generated answers that summarize pages.

One important restriction: since 2023, Google only shows FAQ rich results for well-known, authoritative government and health websites. Other sites can still use FAQPage markup for entity understanding, but should not expect the accordion display in search results.

Types of Structured Data

JSON-LD

JavaScript notation in a script tag, recommended by Google. Easiest to maintain and inject dynamically.

Example: <script type="application/ld+json">{ "@type": "Article", ... }</script>

Microdata

HTML attributes embedded within existing page markup. Harder to maintain when templates change.

Example: <div itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Article">

RDFa

XML-derived attributes embedded in HTML. Common in CMS contexts and Drupal distributions.

Example: <div property="schema:name">Article Title</div>

Why Structured Data Matters for SEO

Structured data removes ambiguity. When Google can parse your article schema, breadcrumb hierarchy, and product details explicitly, it can match your pages to more specific queries and display them more prominently. It is also one of the few SEO levers that is fully within your control and verifiable with free tools.

Eligibility for rich results like stars, breadcrumbs, and product snippets
Explicit entity signals that support semantic search understanding
Machine-readable context for AI search systems that summarize content
Fully validatable with Google Rich Results Test before deployment

Best Practices

Use JSON-LD in a Single Script Tag

Keep markup separate from HTML content. Google recommends JSON-LD because it survives template changes and is easy to audit in one place.

Match Markup to Visible Content

Every fact in your structured data must appear on the page itself. Markup that describes content users cannot see violates Google guidelines and risks a manual action.

Validate Before and After Deploy

Run pages through the Rich Results Test and monitor Search Console enhancement reports for errors that appear after theme or plugin updates.

Mark Up What You Have, Nothing More

Choose the schema type that matches the actual page: Article for posts, Product for store pages, HowTo for step-by-step guides, DefinedTerm for glossary entries.

Common Mistakes

Marking up FAQ pages expecting the rich accordion display

Fix: Google restricts FAQ rich results to government and health sites. Keep the markup for entity clarity, but do not promise clients the visual result.

Describing content that is not visible on the page

Fix: Audit markup against the rendered page. Every schema property should correspond to something a user can actually see.

Running schema only on the homepage

Fix: Templatize structured data so every article, product, and glossary page carries its own contextual markup.

How WPLink Works with Structured Data

WPLink builds the semantic entity map that structured data declares. Our local vector analysis understands which pages cover which topics, so the internal links it suggests reinforce the same entity relationships your schema markup describes to search engines.

Frequently Asked Questions

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