Meet Top Of The List’s new stand-alone service offering: Structured Data for Rich Results. Although that is a mouthful by itself, Structured Data is also known as Schema Markup, and Rich Results are also known as Featured Snippets.

Despite the lack of standardization in terminology, applying structured data is a very powerful way to attract visitors to your website. Let our expert team plan and implement this custom code to make your site listings stand out on search result lists. Together we offer an:

Elegant Solution * Markup Expertise * Custom Level of Support

Why do I need structured data?

Your website makes sense to humans, but it probably doesn’t make sense to machines. 

Structured Data applies Schema.org vocabulary in the form of code to your digital content. We add this code to your website to help machines and search engines understand its content. Visitors do not see the code.

Improve visibility

Structured data helps to improve findability and visibility of websites. In turn, this leads to improved organic and voice search performance. 

On average, customers* enjoy:

• 5% more impressions
• 26% more clicks
• 20% higher CTR (click-thru rate)
• 150% more time on rich result pages
• 3.6x more interaction
• 9 positions higher rank in search
• Higher revenue

All of which they attribute to the addition of structured data for rich results. Here’s an example of some of schema’s impact:

eCommerce Store Rich Results**

The bottom blue line says it all. In less than 1 month, “Products” saw:

• Increased CTR by 12.96%
• Improved Position (Rank) by 38%, or roughly 10 positions

How does structured data bring in these additional visitors?

First, structured data helps your site stand out with rich results. We add code to your site to attract “rich results” in its search engine listings. Eye-catching visuals show up on search engine result pages (SERPs) that:

• Attract the attention of the user
• Bring your content alive
• Take up more real estate on the search results page
• Help you outshine your competition. 

Google offers a variety of rich result features. For instance, rich results are available for Local Business, Products, Events, FAQs, Videos, How-Tos, Articles, and so on. To see how they make your site pop, here are a few examples of what the results look like when searching on various terms:

Example 1 – How To – “how to change a tire”

“Featured” rich result where Bridgestone Tires commands the first listing with its images and steps:

Video rich results for those who want to see and hear the message:

Additional rich results where clicking the arrow shows an answer from another website:

After a user sees all of the above, why would they bother looking at the listings below them? Those don’t have a chance of getting clicks.

Example 2 – Product – “keen newport h2 sandals”

“Product” organic rich results. This listing from Newport themselves shows a Breadcrumb at the very top of the listing. A star rating and the number of votes used in averaging the rating are added to the bottom of the listing.

“Product” organic rich results. This listing from REI shows added details including weight, best use, outsole, and toe coverage and price along with the standard results:

Note the listing from REI likely has more structured data than the one from Keen Footwear itself since it includes more information. That is because Newport likely doesn’t sell the shoes directly from its site.

“Product” carousel rich results from Newport:

Wouldn’t you love to have your products with all these images on Google’s SERP page?

Brand Control

Structured data also gives you greater brand control. Your opportunity to make a great first impression with a potential customer starts in the SERP. You can own that customer experience right from the beginning.  Structured data gives you more control over your brand. You define exactly how you want your brand content to display. You also can control where and how the structured data is distributed on your website so the right message shows up in the rich result.

Business Intelligence

Finally, structured data helps you boost business intelligence. Creating the markup is only the beginning. You can also use it to understand, in greater depth, your website performance:

1. Filter schema.org types in Google Analytics, giving you deeper insight into your traffic.  Examples include Videos, Products, FAQs, How-tos, etc.
2. Once structured data is on your website, you can add the schema.org properties to Google Analytics to understand your visitor behavior in more depth. As an example, an e-commerce site could filter its products by color or shirt size and in doing so, would then provide insights on what color drives the largest shopping cart. Imagine the possibilities!

What about smaller websites (like mine)?

Even if you have a small website, adding the right structured data can help your site stand out from your competitors. Here’s an example of a small roofing business and what their FAQ page looks like on Google after we added structured data:

So yes, even smaller websites can generate a huge presence on SERPs with structured data.

Doesn’t my web platform add structured data automatically?

Your website platform might add some structured data. But Schema changes daily. Your website platform probably isn’t updated that often. When updates are prioritized, structured data may not be a priority on its next version list. The result is that most platforms add minimal, standardized schema. You not only blend in with everyone else, but your site’s code may no longer be correct. As an example:

In the screenshot above, the three Breadcrumb warnings are coming from Shopify’s automated schema. The BlogPosting is coming from our tool and partial manual markup. The error is the result of a missing image in the post. We immediately informed our client and added their image.

Upon inspecting the Breadcrumbs warning, the test says that breadcrumbs are no longer supported by Google. Shopify should remove them from its Schema. Fortunately, our client is safe because the SchemaApp tool filters out the Shopify structured data. Google registers no errors as a result. All the other Shopify customers still have the issues though.

It must be expensive, isn’t it?

It could be but doesn’t have to be. 

The expensive and complex route:

Average structured data developers make upwards of $200 per hour just for the development.

• The code is complex and schema features change often. Not only does someone need to write the new code, but they also need to go back and update it when new requirements are added.
• Someone at the company must keep up to date with the new requirements so they can tell the developer to update the code.
• When the developer updates the code to meet the new requirements, she realizes the code links to many other parts of the code.
• The code that is “linked to” may break as a result of the earlier change. And the cycle continues.

This can turn into a nightmare!

The best route

Use a mix of:

• An elegant solution in the form of a tool. We use SchemaApp for this purpose and are a partner and reseller with the SchemaApp folks. The tool takes a lot of the work away in getting all the syntaxes and relationships correct. Although it still takes skill, it makes our job a lot easier!
  • SchemaApp is updated constantly to reflect changes in schema.org requirements.
  • Since the structured data we create is stored in its database, the interface alerts us if there are warnings or errors in our existing code related to those changes: what they are, and where they are.
  • Then we update that code quickly and easily!
  • Any linked code is automatically updated, else special lights show us where that needs to change too.
• Markup expertise. Here is a big difference between Top Of The List and many other designers and developers. We:
  • Have years of expertise working with structured data and SchemaApp.
  • Keep up with the changes and new features now happening at a lightning pace.
  • Make a plan for your site and zero in on the best areas to markup its content.
  • Help you add new content if needed.
• Custom level of support. Structured data is something that requires working with you. You know your product or service better than anyone, and there are questions you need to answer so the experts marking up your content know too. You get this personal level of support with Top Of The List’s Structured Data Service. We’re here for you every step of the way.

Get started on implementing structured data for your business! It’s the way to stand out from your competitors, draw more prospects into your website, and start reaping the rewards of additional revenue.

One search shows you there is a considerable amount of rich results working for websites now. That’s a lot of clicks that your competitors are getting instead of you. Start the process to add or enhance structured data and make your website even more visible. Contact us and ask for a free quote today!

*SchemaApp Enterprise customer, 2019
**SchemaApp Highlighter customer, 2019