How do search engines use structured data? What are the best practices?

All your pages contain information structured visually so that human visitors can understand it. Think of a product page- these are laid out in such a way that a visitor can see what the product is, how much it costs and how buyers rate it.

This information is not always obvious to a search engine. Separating a product description, name, price, images etc. can be tricky. Structured Data is a way to include a version of this information on the page to tell a search engine precisely what each piece of data is.

Just like HTML is a standard, there's a standard for Structured Data. Plug in SEO includes structured data on all relevant pages in your shop without any extra work for you. This unlocks some pretty interesting things to improve your SEO...

Products

Site name

Sitelinks Searchbox

Logo, Social Profile Links

Breadcrumbs, Articles

Best Practice

The good news is that once you've completed the initial setup Plug in SEO automatically generates Structured Data for you wherever it is appropriate on your shop.

If It isn't showing up in search results:

Like any information from your site, it is at the discretion of a search engine if they show it or not. Typically your site should appear well in search results in a 'plain' format before being considered for structured data enhancement.

Wait a few weeks after adding Plug in SEO, make sure you've updated your shop with some fresh content and then use Plug in SEO, Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools to check there's nothing else hindering your search engine performance.