What Is Structured Data?

Definition

Structured data is machine-readable metadata embedded in a web page that describes its content to search engines in a standard vocabulary. It tells Google what the page is — a product, an article, a recipe, an event — and which properties matter (price, author, ingredients, date).

The shared vocabulary is schema.org, a project maintained by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex. It defines hundreds of types and thousands of properties.

Three Syntaxes — Use JSON-LD

Structured data can be expressed in three syntaxes: JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa. Google recommends JSON-LD for all new implementations. It lives in a single <script type="application/ld+json"> block, so it does not interleave with the rendered HTML and is easier to generate server-side.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "headline": "The Complete Technical SEO Audit",
  "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Jane Doe" },
  "datePublished": "2026-03-15",
  "image": "https://example.com/cover.jpg"
}
</script>

Rich Results — the Visible Payoff

Structured data itself does not raise rankings. Its benefit is rich results — enhanced search listings that include stars, pricing, images, expandable FAQ answers, event dates, recipe cook times, and more. Rich results occupy more pixels on the results page and usually increase click-through rate.

Not every schema type produces a rich result. Google maintains a rich result gallery listing every supported type and its required properties. The most commonly useful ones: Article, Product, Review, Recipe, Event, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList, Organization.

Required vs Recommended Properties

Each schema type has two tiers of properties:

• —Required: missing any of these disqualifies the page from the rich result entirely. Example: a Product without name will not produce a product rich result.
• —Recommended: missing these may reduce the visual richness or eligibility for certain features, but the rich result still renders.

Content Must Match the Page

Google's spam policies require structured data to reflect what is visible on the page. Marking up content that users cannot see, fabricating aggregate review scores, or annotating a page as an event when it is actually a product listing can trigger a manual action. Structured data is a reporting layer, not a cloaking mechanism.

How to Validate

Two official tools:

• —Schema Markup Validator — generic validation against the full schema.org vocabulary.
• —Google Rich Results Test — checks rich-result eligibility specifically for Google.

How Seoxpert Audits Structured Data

The scanner parses every JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa block it finds and reports:

• —Schema types present on each page and whether they are rich-result-eligible
• —Missing required properties that disqualify the rich result
• —Invalid JSON syntax that silently breaks parsing
• —Conflicts between structured data values and visible page content
• —Duplicate or contradictory schema blocks on the same page

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