Benefits of Structured Data (Why It's Important For SEO)-SEO
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This search engine optimization (SEO) guide outlines the key benefits of structured data.
Below, you’ll learn why structured data is important for improving your website’s visibility in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and driving more traffic to your content.
There’s also a section with additional resources explaining the fundamentals of SEO structured data and how to apply it to your website.
Benefits of Structured Data For SEO
The main benefits of structured data are that it uses HTML code to improve how search engines understand and display your content in results pages. Structured data gives search crawlers additional data about key elements of your web page, such as people, locations, or content types (reviews, FAQs, tutorials, etc.).
Search engines like Google and Bing use this data to determine how your content is presented to users in the SERPs when they search for terms related to its subject. Ultimately, this makes structured data a fundamentally important aspect of your SEO.
Why Is Structured Data Important for SEO?
1. Enhances Visibility in Search Results
Structured data benefits your website by increasing its presence in search engine results pages. The information given to search crawlers through this data is used to improve the accuracy with which your content matches the search intent of the user’s search queries.
For example, using structured data helps Google understand your page about “eagles” talks about the bird of prey and not the Philadelphia football team or the classic rock band.
It ensures that you appear more prominently for the most relevant search terms, resulting in better-targeted traffic being driven to your pages.
2. Increases Organic Traffic With Rich Snippets
Rich Snippets are search results that stand out by including additional elements such as:
- Videos
- Images
- Product or event information
- Answers to specific questions are found within your content.
In the example above, you can see how using structured data helped these food websites get their French toast recipes at the very top of the search results page, even before the organic results.
You can imagine the positive impact rich snippets like this can have on your click-through rates. Not only do rich snippets occupy prime real estate in SERPs, but they’re also much more visually appealing, making them an attractive option for users and resulting in increased web traffic.
3. Reduces Bounce Rate
One of the most overlooked benefits of structured data is that it helps reduce bounce rates. The bounce rate increases for a web page every time a user lands on your content, determines it doesn’t meet their needs, and promptly leaves.
Sometimes, the visitors to your website leave due to a usability issue, such as a slow page loading speed. However, more often than not, the content doesn’t match their search intent.
The more people that bounce from your website, the less likely search engines are to view it as a useful and relevant resource, and the further down the search rankings it gets pushed.
Structured data can help prevent this devastating impact on your SEO in two ways, one of which we’ve already seen in point number one above. By telling search engines that your “eagles” page is about the different species of bird of prey, you avoid your bounce rates being affected by users who come to your site looking for information about the NFL team.
The second way structured data benefits your bounce rate is by allowing users to preview the content directly in the SERPs.
Content directly answering a user’s search query can appear in featured snippets like the one above. When users see this, they can make an informed decision about whether the content meets their needs before clicking through, resulting in fewer users hitting their back button and damaging your bounce rate.
4. Improves Your Reputation as a Credible and Reliable Source
Another notable reason structured data is important for increasing click-throughs and web traffic is that it enhances how search users perceive your website.
People trust Google to provide relevant, reliable, and accurate information. If they didn’t, it wouldn’t be the most widely-used search engine in the world.
When you use structured data, it shows up as a featured snippet or rich result. Your content is then showcased prominently and attractively at the top of search pages. As a result, users searching for information trust that Google is showing them the most helpful answer or the best solution to their problem.
The impact can lead to a boost in credibility for your website and your business as more users see that their trusted source (Google) considers you a valuable source of information. And the more users trust you, the more likely they will click through.
But that’s not all. When your pages seem like a trusted resource by Google, then you can gain more organic backlinks to boost your overall Domain Authority and Page Authority scores. As a result, more sites will begin linking back to your content to further increase those SEO metrics.
5. Boosts Sales With Social Proof
Structured data can also display customer reviews and star ratings in search results next to your product listings.
Including this markup throughout your ecommerce store demonstrates social proof, essentially validating the quality and desirability of your products in the eyes of your customers.
When those customers see that people like them have high regard for your products, it strengthens their trust in those products and your brand. That trust then positively influences their decision to click through to your product page and tap that all-important “Add to Cart” button.
That said, ratings and reviews markup benefits more than just online stores.
Suppose you run a bar, restaurant, food delivery company, or any service business. In that case, positive reviews can directly impact your bottom line, so incorporating them into your search result listings can lead to an increase in bookings, orders, and deliveries.
6. Optimizes For Local Search
Suppose your business serves customers within a specific geographical region. If so, then you already know how important local SEO is for winning new customers. And chances are, you’ll be eagerly looking for new and more effective ways to optimize your brand’s presence in local search results, which is precisely what you’ll get with structured data.
You can use structured data markup to provide search engine crawlers with relevant and accurate information about your business such as the address, phone number, and opening hours, to more complex data such as:
- Restaurant menus
- Hotel accommodation types
- Services offered (including pricing)
- Local event information
All this data improves the accuracy of the information in your business listing in the search results and can also prove invaluable for getting your business on maps and in prime spots in search results for “near me” queries.
7. Reach an Untapped Audience With Voice Search
Last but not least, never underestimate the important role of voice assistants such as Siri and Amazon Alexa in driving people to your website.
Millions of people use the voice assistant features on their smart devices to search for information every month, so this certainly isn’t a traffic source any serious website owner can afford to ignore.
Still, what does all this have to do with structured data?
The answer is simple: Using the “Speakable” tag, you can highlight specific sections of your content and tell Google that these sections are optimized to be read aloud by voice assistants.
This strategy increases the chances of your website being featured as a voice search result, helping you reach an untapped audience and provide them with high-quality, accurate information that can bolster your website’s reputation.
Learn More About Structured Data
The links below explain more about structured data and how it relates to search engine optimization. Use these resources to expand your knowledge on the subject.
Structured Data Benefits for SEO Summary
We hope you enjoyed this guide about the benefits of structured data for SEO.
As you discovered, structured data matters because it uses HTML code to improve how search engines understand and display your content in the search results pages. Structured data gives search crawlers additional data about key elements of your web page, such as people, locations, or content types for better indexing, ranking, and display in the SERPs.
The Editorial Staff at SEO Chatter is a team of search engine optimization and digital marketing experts led by Stephen Hockman with more than 15 years of experience in search engine marketing. We publish guides on the fundamentals of SEO for beginner marketers.
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