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JSON-LD For SEO: A Beginner’s Guide To Structured Data That Ranks

Google’s indexing and crawling of web pages is an important function that helps businesses showcase their offerings to a wider audience. If the search engine cannot index your web page, no matter how valuable your content, no one will see it. JSON-LD, JavaScript Object Notation for Linking Data, helps Google to understand the context of your web page and helps in indexing.

What is JSON-LD Code? It is a code for linking data across websites and the internet. In this blog, you will get to know about what JSON-LD structured data is and how to use JSON-LD for SEO.

What is JSON-LD Code?

JSON-LD structured data is one of the formats for structuring data, similar to JSON, but with added semantic information that makes it easier for machines, like search engine crawlers, to understand the context of the data. It uses a shared vocabulary, like Schema.org, to define the meaning of properties within a JSON document. It creates machine-based language that is very easy for search crawlers to index. Actually, it encodes linked data using JSON-LD. This kind of structured yet machine-readable data is a must-have requirement for indexing.

The relevance of JSON-LD structured data

You know the relevance of structured data. It helps a search engine clearly understand the whole content of the web page. It is widely accepted because it is the Structured format, so that a person can understand whether the page deals with business offerings or a blog. For example, Google product structured data. All search engines depend on this to get an idea about millions of web pages out there.

Not only does Google reward the use of structured data, but it brief information about different types of schema markup structured data and what is accepted as standard format. The following reasons make JSON-LD structured data relevant for your business.

Google, as well as other search engines, support JSON-LD structured data because of its inherent nature and simple syntax.
Helps in AI-driven search results
Increase your chance ot appearing on rich result pages
Boosts overall user experience for the end-user
Increases organic search results
Schema markup featured snippet boosts your conversions and click-through rates

Key features of JSON-LD SEO

JSON-LD_ SEO facilitates link building across websites
Semantic Markup allows you to add semantic references to data
The language is easy to read and interpret by machines
JSON_LD for SEO boost SERP results

How to use JSON-LD for SEO?

Search engines can interpret machine-based language and data. By employing JSON-LD SEO, you connect various elements on a web page and create structured data that is easy to comprehend and interpret. When structured data is used on a website, you can rest assured about indexing and overall user experience.

Where Does JSON-LD Schema Go?

You may wonder where JSON-LD Schema goes in a website’s code. Google loves you to use JSON-LD on your website, and you can insert this into HEAD, SCRIPT, and BODY HTML tags. Using a content management system, it is possible for search engines to automatically read your structured data.

The difference between JSON and JSON-LD

Hypermedia support and rich semantics are characteristics of JSON-LD, and it is perfectly compatible with traditional JSON. On the other hand, the full form of JavaScript Object Notation is a useful data serialization and messaging format used to define JSON-LD. It is human-readable and easy for computers to parse and index a web page as per schema.org standards. Whereas JSON is schemaless. The real difference is be JSON-LD is powerful than JSON in terms of SEO value, user experience, and rich snippets.

JSON-LD schema examples

A basic example is elucidated below:

{

“@context”: “https://schema.org/”,

“@type”: “Organization”,

“name”: “Acme Corp”,

“url”: “https://www.acmecorp.com”,

“address”: {

“@type”: “PostalAddress”,

“streetAddress”: “123 Main St”,

“addressLocality”: “Anytown”,

“addressRegion”: “CA”,

“postalCode”: “91234”,

“country”: “USA”

}

Common JSON-LD Schema Mistakes

The following are common JSON-LD schema mistakes you can avoid while thinking of how to use JSON-LD for SEO.

1. Missing or Incorrect Properties

Required Properties: Essential properties for a schema type, like name, price, or description for a Product schema, must be included.
Incomplete Information: Providing only partial information or incorrect values can lead to errors.

2. Invalid Syntax

Formatting Errors:
Problems with brackets, commas, or other syntax elements in JSON-LD can cause validation failures.
Missing Punctuation:
You need no explanation here. All kinds of punctuation are very important in JSON-LD.

3. Unsupported or Outdated Schema Types:

Unrecognized Types:
Using schema types that are not supported by search engines can cause errors.
Outdated Markup:
Using old or deprecated schema versions can lead to issues as search engines update their standards.

4. Conflicting or Duplicate Schema Markup

Multiple Markups:
Having multiple schema markups for the same content or conflicting information can confuse search engines.

5. Formatting and Copying Errors:

Copying from Word: Copying schema markup from programs like Microsoft Word can introduce formatting issues, like incorrect quotation marks, breaking the syntax.

Marking up a page’s hidden content and over-optimization are other mistakes to avoid.

How to test JSON-LD structured data?

Key Tools for Testing JSON-LD

Google’s Rich Results Test:
This tool is specifically designed to verify your JSON-LD markup for eligibility for rich results in Google Search. You can paste your website URL or code snippet into the tool, and it will check for potential issues and provide insights into how your data is being interpreted by Google.
Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool:
This tool helps you identify and fix any errors in your structured data markup, including JSON-LD. It can also provide information about the types of structured data you’ve implemented and how Google interprets them.
JSON-LD Playground:
This tool allows you to validate your JSON-LD syntax and structure to ensure it adheres to the JSON-LD specifications. You can paste your JSON-LD code into the tool, and it will provide a detailed report on any errors or issues.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider:
This tool can crawl your website and extract structured data, including JSON-LD.
Other Tools:
There are also other tools available, such as SEO SiteCheckup and JSON-LD Linter, which offer similar capabilities for testing and validating structured data, including JSON-LD.

SEO with JSON-LD benefits are enormous and some of them are listed below: