Using Screaming Frog to Audit and Optimise Structured Data for Rich Results in 2025

Search results in 2025 look more visual, interactive, and competitive than they ever have. Structured data enhances search results and makes them more visually rich. From FAQ snippets to review stars and video carousels, structured data is what powers the updates and visibility for websites, and it is becoming more essential in achieving higher visibility in Google. However, the challenge lies in implementing schema markup properly and, most importantly, error-free.

Screaming Frog structured data capabilities enable you to become proactive rather than reactive! The tool crawls your entire website and is able to audit schema markup for validation issues so you can improve your visibility and achieve rich results.

This blog post covers everything you need to gain knowledge of how to run a structured data audit in Screaming Frog, how to find duplicate content in Screaming Frog, how to evaluate the results, and how to utilize the audit to your SEO benefit in 2025.

Why Structured Data Is Critical for SEO in 2025

Structured data is the basis of modern search optimisation, telling search engines exactly what your page content is about – a product, an article, a recipe, or a business. When done correctly, it helps Google show richer search features like star ratings, images or FAQs.

However, Google’s algorithms are stricter nowadays. If you have invalid or incomplete markup, Google might ignore your structured data and trigger a warning in Search Console. That’s why it is very important to audit your structured data regularly in Screaming Frog.

It will ensure your markup is clean and make sure it is correct and in line with Google’s rich results guidelines, like giving your content a better chance of being featured in those much-needed SERP features.

Understanding Structured Data and Schema

Before we begin the audit process, it’s essential to understand what structured data actually is. Structured data is a type of metadata that is added to webpages to assist search engines in understanding the content on the page. It is typically used in JSON structured data formats because it is clean, flexible, and officially supported by Google. Other formats, such as Microdata or RDFa, exist but are less common in SEO configuration today. For instance, a Product schema may declare:

“name”: “Leather Laptop Bag”

“price”: “£79.99”

“availability”: “InStock”

This structured layer will help Google understand not just what your content says, but what it means.

The Role of Screaming Frog in Structured Data Auditing

• Manual tools, like Google’s Rich Results Test, are suitable for single URLs, but they quickly give way to uselessness for large websites. That’s where the Screaming Frog structured data functionality comes in. 
• The Screaming Frog SEO Spider crawls your entire website and checks all of your pages for structured data markup. It validates against Schema.org and Google rich results eligibility. 
• This makes it one of the strongest schema audit tools for professionals that need accurate structured data information on a large scale.

How to Run a Structured Data Audit in Screaming Frog

Conducting a structured data audit in Screaming Frog is easy and effective! 

Here is how you should do it – 

• Create a new crawl of your domain. 
• Go to Configuration and then – Spider – Extraction.
• Check all options under “Structured Data” like JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa.
• Check both “Validate Schema.org”, and “Validate Google Rich Result Features”
• Hit Start to start crawling.

Once finished crawling, choose the Structured Data tab. You’ll see a complete breakdown of every schema on your site, full schema type, validation status, and errors and warnings.

Interpreting Your Structured Data Results

Once the crawl is completed, you can sort results by schema type (i.e., Product, Article, FAQ, or LocalBusiness). Screaming Frog breaks issues down into the three categories:
 


Errors – Required fields are missing or invalid property types.
 


Warnings – A field is missing but is optional (however, it is recommended to have/implement these fields).
 


Parse Errors – Issues with the structure or syntax of your markup.
 


For example, if an Article schema has a “author” or “headline” property missing, this will fall into the error category. These are significant issues that can block the display of rich results from Google.
 


The ability to see validation in detail is incredibly useful for structured data analysis within Screaming Frog for ongoing technical SEO tasks.

Using the Details Pane for Debugging

By clicking on any problematic URL, the structured data details pane opens. You can see the raw JSON-LD code, validation results by property, and links to Schema.org documentation.

This can save you a massive amount of time as compared to opening code snippets manually. You should easily be able to identify missing commas, incorrect property names, and out of date schema versions without touching the live site code.

Exporting and Sharing Structured Data Reports

Perhaps the most appealing aspect of Screaming Frog is its robust export capability. 

If you want to create a summary of the structured data validation errors on your site, head to the Reports menu, click on Structured Data, and then Validation Errors and Warnings Summary. You will receive an export containing all the schema types, their issues (if any) and the relevant URLs presented in a tidy, clean format that’s easy for a client to digest. 

You can use these exports in a variety of ways to fill in developers, to report development progress over time, and to ensure that the quality and volume of structured data is improving after each crawl on a website. 

For new or not-so-new sites, regularly auditing their structured data using Screaming Frog’s automation features can keep things on the path of optimisation over time as work is completed.

Optimising Structured Data for Rich Results

Once you are able to identify errors, the next step is to make corrections and optimise your schema for visibility. Trust the following best practices for optimising structured data with Screaming Frog:

Correct all errors first – required fields that are missing are most important.

• Add recommended properties if you want to be eligible for rich features.
• Use one schema type per content theme (i.e. Product on product detail pages).
• Use Google’s Rich Results Test to validate your changes before recrawling.
• Maintain schema markup relevance and keep up with the current Schema.org guidelines.

By being disciplined about schema and structured markup, you will grow your eligibility for rich results, and continue building a solid foundation for technical SEO overall.

Common Mistakes During Schema Implementation

Even seasoned SEOs can fail to remember simple schema details. Here are a few common mistakes:

• You may have mixed Microdata and JSON-LD formats on the same page.
• You may have used the wrong schema type for the content.
• You may not have been aware of new Schema.org properties.
• You may have forgotten to revalidate the schema after changes to the website.

If you’re auditing a large site, then it’s smart to combine both the schema validation and a Screaming Frog internal link audit. This ensures that the schema and the link architecture support each other as best as possible for the benefit of both users and search engines navigating the site.

Integrating Schema Audits into Broader SEO Workflows

Schema validation should not be relegated to a single step. It is part of a broader, technical SEO ecosystem that includes things like crawl issues, canonical checks, and duplicate content detection. 

As an example, if you want to learn about checking for duplicate content in Screaming Frog, you can cross-check whether the duplicate pages have the same structured data. Duplicate or conflicting schemas can confuse search engines and lessen your chances of being featured in a rich snippet.

If you are new to Screaming Frog, take a look at a Screaming Frog guide to understand how the different audit functions – rendering, meta extraction, data validation – interact with your website to improve overall performance.

When to Seek Professional Assistance

For larger or schema-rich sites (e-commerce sites or news publishers, for example), schema audit tools, schema auditing can become complicated quickly.

In these instances, it makes sense to source SEO expertise from a professional SEO company in UAE or other regional experts, who can automate structured data validations, complete technical fixes at scale, and provide ongoing monitoring for compliance with the latest Google standards.

Final Thoughts: Keep Your Structured Data Future-Proof

As search changes in 2025, structured data optimization with Screaming Frog will remain a significant catalyst for visibility and engagement. However, like all other technical SEO, structured data requires regular monitoring and optimization.

By using the Screaming Frog structured data auditing features and conducting a periodic structured data audit in Screaming Frog, you can stay ahead of technical issues, protect your visibility and leverage opportunities to show up in rich results. 

Keep in mind — great structured data optimization with Screaming Frog does more than support your rankings, it also enhances your brand presentation in search. So, be proactive, conduct your audits and continue to sharpen your schema strategy throughout the year.