{"id":8246,"date":"2026-08-01T08:11:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T08:11:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dextora.agency\/insights\/schema-org-structured-data-what-to-mark-up-guide\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T08:40:01","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T08:40:01","slug":"schema-org-structured-data-what-to-mark-up-guide","status":"publish","type":"insight","link":"https:\/\/dextora.agency\/en\/insights\/schema-org-structured-data-what-to-mark-up-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"Schema.org: What to Mark Up and What It Actually Delivers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Structured data is one of the few things in search where the result does not depend on competition. You are not competing with anyone for the right to explain to a search engine what is on the page. You either explained it or you did not.<\/p>\n<p>And yet markup remains the most frequently skipped item. The reason is that it is invisible: the page looks identical with and without it, so nobody gets round to it.<\/p>\n<h2>What it is in practice<\/h2>\n<p>It is a block of data in the page source that repeats what a person sees, in a format a machine understands. A person sees an article headline, a date and an author. A machine sees text and guesses. Markup removes the guessing.<\/p>\n<p>Technically the most convenient format is a separate JSON block in the page source. It does not mix with the layout, is easy to validate, and does not break when the design changes.<\/p>\n<h2>Which types deliver results<\/h2>\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<th>Type<\/th>\n<th>What it is for<\/th>\n<th>Who needs it<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>Organization<\/td>\n<td>Who you are: name, logo, contacts, profiles<\/td>\n<td>Everyone, added once<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>LocalBusiness<\/td>\n<td>Address, hours, service area<\/td>\n<td>Anyone customers visit<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Article<\/td>\n<td>Headline, date, author, publisher<\/td>\n<td>Blogs and articles<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>BreadcrumbList<\/td>\n<td>The path to the page<\/td>\n<td>Sites deeper than two levels<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>FAQPage<\/td>\n<td>Questions and answers<\/td>\n<td>Pages with a questions section<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Product<\/td>\n<td>Price, availability, specifications<\/td>\n<td>Online stores<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Service<\/td>\n<td>Service description and geography<\/td>\n<td>Service businesses<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>The first three cover most of an ordinary site&#8217;s needs. Start there rather than with exotic types.<\/p>\n<h2>What it genuinely delivers<\/h2>\n<p>Honestly, without promises:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>A link between content and organisation.<\/strong> Article markup naming the publisher states who produced the material. That is the signal by which a company becomes a recognisable entity rather than a collection of pages.<\/li>\n<li><strong>A chance at an enhanced appearance in results.<\/strong> Breadcrumbs instead of a URL, ratings, price, date. A chance specifically: markup makes a page eligible but does not guarantee display.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Better parsing for <a href=\"https:\/\/dextora.agency\/en\/insights\/website-for-ai-search-appear-in-chatgpt-answers\/\">AI answers<\/a>.<\/strong> A model assembling a response receives structure instead of text it has to interpret.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Unambiguous facts.<\/strong> Opening hours, address and price stop depending on how the text on the page was interpreted.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What it does not deliver: markup does not raise rankings by itself. It is not a ranking factor, it is a way of being understood correctly. A page with no useful substance and perfect markup will not rise.<\/p>\n<h2>How to implement it<\/h2>\n<p>The order that produces results fastest:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Organization on every page.<\/strong> Name, logo, website, contacts, links to social profiles. Added once in the template.<\/li>\n<li><strong>BreadcrumbList in the page template.<\/strong> Generated automatically from existing structure.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Article on posts.<\/strong> Headline, publication date, modification date, author, publisher, image.<\/li>\n<li><strong>LocalBusiness if you have an address.<\/strong> The same data as your maps profile, character for character.<\/li>\n<li><strong>FAQPage where questions and answers genuinely exist.<\/strong> Not invented for the sake of markup.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The key point: all of this belongs in templates, not typed by hand on each page. Markup that requires manual entry becomes outdated within two months.<\/p>\n<h2>Mistakes that stop it working<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Markup that does not match visible content.<\/strong> The most serious error. If the code says one price and the page another, it reads as an attempt to deceive.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Marking up what is not on the page.<\/strong> An FAQ block in the code with no questions section in the text.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Ratings and reviews that do not exist.<\/strong> A rating with no real reviews behind it is a direct route to penalties.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Duplication.<\/strong> One markup type added by both the theme and a plugin. The conflict means both versions get ignored.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Missing required fields.<\/strong> Markup with half the data is often simply not counted.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Different data in markup and in your business profile.<\/strong> The same consistency required for maps and mentions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>How to check<\/h2>\n<p>Three methods, from simplest to most precise:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Search the page source.<\/strong> Look for the JSON markup declaration. If it is not there, neither is your markup.<\/li>\n<li><strong>A structured data testing tool.<\/strong> Shows which types were found and where the errors are.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Search Console report.<\/strong> The most useful: it shows markup across the whole site with errors by type, rather than one page at a time.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Check that last one two weeks after implementation: the data does not appear instantly.<\/p>\n<h2>Where to start<\/h2>\n<p>If you have no markup at all, the most useful first step is Organization in the template and Article on posts. That is a few hours of work in the site theme, after which every new page gets markup automatically.<\/p>\n<p>You will not see the effect in rankings tomorrow. It shows up elsewhere: your content starts connecting unambiguously to your company, and facts about it stop depending on how they were interpreted from the text. For brand recognition in search and in AI answers that works better than any amount of naming yourself inside the articles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Seven markup types and who needs which, what it genuinely delivers and what it does not, six mistakes that get it ignored, and why to start with Organization and Article in the template.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":8242,"template":"","insight_category":[154],"insight_tag":[174,172,162],"class_list":["post-8246","insight","type-insight","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","insight_category-guides","insight_tag-ai-search","insight_tag-seo","insight_tag-web-development"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dextora.agency\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/insight\/8246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dextora.agency\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/insight"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dextora.agency\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/insight"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dextora.agency\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dextora.agency\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dextora.agency\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"insight_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dextora.agency\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/insight_category?post=8246"},{"taxonomy":"insight_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dextora.agency\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/insight_tag?post=8246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}