Long gone are the days of slapping some copy with tastefully sprinkled keywords into the old Gutenberg editor and crossing your fingers that the Google Machine will show it to your audience. Search engines need context—and structured data markup provides it. This blog series will unpack the what, why, and how of structured data, starting with the basics. Whether you’re a part of a larger digital marketing team, or a lone wolf developer, understanding structured data is a smart move toward making your website more discoverable, clickable, and competitive.
In this first article, we’ll cover what structured data is and why it should be a key consideration when building or updating your website. Keep an eye out for more in this series!
What Is Structured Data?
Structured data is content formatted in a way that can be easily understood by both humans and machines. While people can interpret meaning through context and experience, search engine bots don’t have that luxury. Structured data gives them the explicit information they need to accurately interpret and categorize a webpage.
Think of it like this: Unstructured data is your body language, tone of voice, and general vibe. It gives people clues, but it’s not always clear. Structured data is saying out loud, “Hi, I’m Olivia. I’m an account manager at a digital marketing agency. I love talking about my daughter and eating candy corn all year long.” It’s direct, unambiguous, and you now get to discuss candy corn with your weird new friend.
Why Structured Data Is Important
Adding structured data helps your content show up more meaningfully in search results. It powers rich results—the enhanced listings you see in Google with star ratings, event dates, product prices, and more.
These enhancements make your content more engaging, informative, and clickable. And the numbers back it up (Per Google’s Introduction to Structured Data Markup):
- Rotten Tomatoes saw a 25% higher click-through rate after adding structured data to 100,000 pages.
- The Food Network converted 80% of their pages and saw a 35% increase in visits.
- Rakuten users spent 1.5x more time on pages with structured data and had a 3.6x higher interaction rate.
- Nestlé reported an 82% higher CTR on pages showing rich results in search.
Structured Data for SEO and Accessibility
Structured data is a behind-the-scenes SEO secret weapon. When bots can understand your content, they’re more likely to present it to the right people. As AI and machine learning continue to influence search algorithms (like AI Overviews, formerly Search Generative Experience), this kind of technical clarity will only become more important to your organic traffic strategy.
It also plays a role in accessibility, helping screen readers and other assistive technologies interpret content more effectively—making your website more inclusive to all users.
Common Misconceptions
You don’t need to be a massive brand like Rotten Tomatoes or Rakuten to benefit from structured data. Whether you’re a local retailer, a nonprofit, or a B2B SaaS provider, structured data can help your content shine in search and connect with the right audience.
Is Adding Structured Data Worth the Effort?
Implementing structured data—especially across an existing site—is no small feat. But the payoff can be significant. Thankfully, there are tools that make it easier to audit and automate structured data implementation. Your marketing team (or your agency!) can help identify priority areas to start seeing results faster.
Ready to Learn More?
This article is just the beginning. Coming soon in this series:
- The must-have types of structured data for any modern website
- How structured data impacts both traditional and AI-powered SEO
- Ways structured data enhances user experience and accessibility
- Tools and resources to help your team implement it effectively
To sum it up: structured data helps make websites better for both humans and machines.
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