Structured Data

Search engines read this layer before they read a sentence of copy. Google describes it as a standardised format for giving explicit clues about the meaning of a page, and recommends JSON-LD for most sites (Google Search Central); the vocabulary most sites use is Schema.org.

Why It Matters

When the data agrees with the words on the page, a machine can repeat the page’s facts with confidence; when it is missing, the machine has to guess from the layout. A page without it is a picture of text. A page with it is a set of facts an answer can use.

How the Studio Uses It

On every site the studio builds, the firm is declared once, as an organisation with its founder and the services it offers; each service page declares its service; each article declares its author, its date and the terms it is about; each chart declares itself as an image with its caption, and its numbers sit beside it as a table. This site does the same: every term here is a defined term in the studio’s own set, and every paper says which terms it is about. Every type is checked against what Google’s rich results require before it ships.

What It Is Not

It is not a ranking trick, and it does not make a page appear in rich results by itself: Google decides what to show. Data that says something the page does not say is a fault, not an advantage.

How to Check It on Your Own Site

1. Run a page through Google’s Rich Results Test and read what it finds.
2. Compare the organisation’s name, address and services in the data with the words on the page and in the firm’s profiles: they should be the same.
3. Check that each article names its author and date, and each service page names its service.