Regardless of how well-written your content is, it won’t make much of an impact if it’s not crawled by search engine bots. Adding structured data snippets to your page’s HTML helps your content appear in search results, along with your URL and metadata.
What is structured data?
Structured data is HTML code that pulls important business information from your page in order to improve your search ranking. This is a good way for crawlers to verify your name, address, and phone number, as well as key services you offer. You can fill out this information in the Google Structured Data Markup Highlighter in Webmasters Tools. After highlighting the pages you want, you will be provided with a code that can be implemented into your website to make it easier to read.
How does structured data help?
Structured data can help you appear in a number of new searches. For example, Google is now incorporating previous search history into broader searches, taking into account the user’s location and similar searches from the past. Structured data helps personalize the search, especially as mobile search rises from smartphones and tablets. Instead of solely relying on keywords to be found, structured data allows you to be found for broader searches and closer to your user’s location. If you fill out schema markup, you will be able to build stronger links and further optimize your listing for local search.