Structured Data

What is Structured Data?

Structured data is code you add to your pages — usually JSON-LD — that tells search engines exactly what your content means. It's the schema.org vocabulary that turns a page about a product into a machine-readable product entity with price, availability, and reviews. It's how you speak the language machines understand. Not just for Google. For every AI that reads the web.

What it means in practice

You implement structured data by adding JSON-LD scripts to your pages that describe entities: articles, products, FAQs, organizations, people. This enables rich results in Google — star ratings, FAQ dropdowns, how-to steps. But the real value now goes beyond rich results. AI models use structured data to understand entity relationships, verify facts, and decide which sources to trust. Well-structured pages are easier for LLMs to parse and cite. It's the foundation layer for both AEO and GEO. Without it, you're asking machines to guess what your content is about.

Why it matters

Structured data is the bridge between human-readable content and machine understanding. As search becomes more AI-driven, the sites with clear schema markup get cited more, appear in more rich results, and build stronger entity signals. It's low-effort, high-leverage work that compounds over time.

Common mistakes

• Implementing schema markup once and never validating or updating it
• Only using basic types and missing opportunities for deeper entity markup
• Treating structured data as an SEO checkbox instead of a core content strategy