SEO For Dummies

Chapter 8

Using Structured Data Markup

In This Chapter

Understanding structured data markup

Picking a data format

Modifying your site’s Knowledge Graph box

Finding helpful markup tools

tructured data markup is a way to mark your data to provide contextual information to the searchbots. In effect, you’re telling the search engines that “this is a photograph of a recipe, and this is our company logo, and this is a phone number,” and so on.

HTML is a basic markup language that tells browsers what to do with information; how to display it on the page, essentially. But structured data markup goes one step further and tells the searchbots what the data actually is or means, so the search engines can use the data in various ways.

Both Google and Bing use structured data markup. You can find information about each search engine’s implementation at these links:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99170

www.bing.com/webmaster/help/marking-up-your-site-with-structured-data-3a93e731

Structured data markup lets you code information, such as the following:

• Company ...