Google’s search advocate, John Mueller, addressed two questions about structured data at a recent Google Search Center SEO office hour meetup.
While the first question is specific to the medical field, his answers are useful and applicable to any field site.
Mueller also explains how to use the Google Developer Help page to determine the best structured data to work with.
How to choose structured data for your website
The questions asked are about how to choose structured data and what impact it can have.
Mueller said there is little point in matching structured data to pages. Instead, the choices are about the rich types of results available for that page.
Structured data is highly scalable. As such, the Scehma.org website provides an ever-growing list of different types of structured data that can fit into almost any web page.
However, Google uses only a fraction of the structured data available to generate search results, such as review star ratings, images in search results, and more.
Google’s structured data page explain:
“Google search struggles to understand what the page is about.
You can help us by including structured data on the page to give Google clear clues about the meaning of the page. Structured data is a standardized format used to provide information about and categorize page content; for example, on a recipe page, what are the ingredients, cooking time and temperature, calories, and more.
Google uses the structured data it finds on the web to understand the content of pages, as well as to gather information about the web and the world at large. “
That’s the direction of Mueller’s answer.
Here is the question being asked:
“How does Schema affect websites in the medical field? What structured data should be used there?”
Mueller replied:
“So, I’m mostly… When it comes to structured data, I’m going to focus primarily on what we document in the developer documentation and the specific functionality associated with it.
So rather than what structured data should I use for this type of site, what are the visible attributes I want to find in search results?
Then from there, see what are the requirements for these visual properties and whether I can implement the appropriate structured data to meet those requirements.
So this is where I’m going. “
Rich Results Feature for Google Structured Data Lists
Google have a page List rich results that can be displayed for different types of pages.
The list of structured data that can be used to generate rich results is in alphabetical order, starting with article structured data and ending with video structured data.
This page from Google is one of the best resources to help publishers and SEOs identify the correct structured data to use.
Does every page need structured data?
The next question is whether every web page needs structured data.
Generally speaking, there are small structured data like breadcrumbs that are useful to almost any page on a website.
When it comes to SEO and structured data, breadcrumbs easily win. They help generate enhanced listings in Google’s search results.
So even though breadcrumbs may seem like a small thing, it can be useful once a site starts ranking.
Google says this about breadcrumb structured data:
“A breadcrumb path on a page indicates the page’s position in the site hierarchy, and it helps users understand and explore the site effectively. By starting with the last breadcrumb in the breadcrumb path, users can navigate the site hierarchy Navigate all the way up, one level at a time.
Google Search uses breadcrumb tags in the body of a web page to categorize information about pages in search results. Often, users can arrive at pages with very different types of search queries, as shown in the following use case. While each search may return the same web page, breadcrumbs categorize content in the context of a Google search query. “
But beyond that, Mueller’s suggestion that viewing rich results for the page is a good place to start.
Here is the problem:
“Does every page need schema or structured data?”
Mueller replied:
“No, absolutely not.
Like I mentioned, use a guideline on which visual elements I want to be visible to my page, and then find the right structured data for that.
There is absolutely no need to put structured data on every page. “
Citation
Check out Google’s structured database
What structured data is required?
Watch John Mueller answer questions from 27:19 minutes:
Featured image: Screenshot from YouTube.com/GoogleSearchCentral, May 2022.
