What is Structured Data and Why JSON-LD is the Gold Standard
Structured data is a standardized format for providing explicit clues about the meaning of a webpage to search engines like Google, Bing, and Yandex. While web crawlers can parse raw HTML, unstructured text requires probabilistic natural language processing. By implementing structured data defined by the Schema.org vocabulary, you explicitly communicate entity types (e.g., this is a Product with price $149.99, rated 4.9 stars by 128 buyers). Google explicitly endorses JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) over legacy Microdata or RDFa formats because JSON-LD lives cleanly within a single <script type="application/ld+json"> tag without polluting your visible HTML markup.
<!-- Baseline FAQPage Schema in JSON-LD -->
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "FAQPage",
"mainEntity": [
{
"@type": "Question",
"name": "How does Schema Markup improve SEO?",
"acceptedAnswer": {
"@type": "Answer",
"text": "Structured data qualifies pages for rich results in Google SERPs, dramatically increasing Click-Through Rates (CTR)."
}
}
]
}
</script>