Schema Markup: Structured Data Explained

When you see star ratings, a product price or a recipe cook time right under a Google result, that comes from schema markup — structured data you embed in the page code. It is the language you use to tell machines what your content actually means: that "4.8" is a rating and not a price, that "€4.20" is the cost of a plan, or that a block of text is a question with an answer.

Why it pays off

Schema markup does not raise rankings directly, but it increases visibility and clicks. Rich results take up more space and draw the eye. In practice, at the same position, a page with stars or an FAQ block often gets 20-30% more clicks than one without. For a local business, a store or a blog, it is a free way to stand out from competitors.

The most useful types

• LocalBusiness — address, opening hours and phone for companies with a physical location.
• Product — price, availability and ratings for stores.
• Article — author, date and featured image for blogs.
• FAQPage — questions and answers shown expandable in results.
• Breadcrumb — the page path instead of a bare URL.

How to add it

Google recommends the JSON-LD format — a code block placed in the page header that does not touch visible content. On WordPress, most SEO plugins (Rank Math, Yoast) generate basic schema automatically, and WooCommerce handles it for products. If you write it by hand, just copy an example from schema.org and replace the values with your own data.

Always test it

Before publishing, check your code with the Google Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator. The most common mistake is marking up content the user cannot see on the page — Google penalises this. The rule is simple: only mark up what genuinely exists on the page. Fast loading also helps Google process your data — if your site is slow, take a look at our SEO hosting plans with NVMe drives and a CDN. You will find the technical basics in our plans overview too.

Schema markup is one of the few SEO moves that delivers a visible result within hours of work, with no risk. Set it up once, correctly, and it works in the background.