Markup written in the schema.org vocabulary that tells machines explicitly what a page contains, turning product, article, FAQ and brand facts from interpretable prose into stated data.
What is structured data?
When a product page says "£39", a human knows that is a price; a machine infers it. Structured data removes the inference: you add a separate layer to the page — usually as JSON-LD — saying "this is a Product, this is its name, this is its price, this is the currency, this is its availability". The shared vocabulary used for that is schema.org.
The commonly used types are few: Product and Offer for products, BlogPosting for articles, FAQPage for question blocks, BreadcrumbList for navigation, Organization for the business itself. On this site every blog post and every concept page emits that markup automatically — it is derived from the content, never hand-written.
What it solves — and what it doesn't
What it solves is ambiguity. A search engine classifies the page correctly, you become eligible for rich results (prices, ratings, expandable FAQ blocks), and Search Console reports separately on whether the markup is valid. What it does not solve is the content itself: markup cannot manufacture quality that isn't there.
- Markup must match what the page visibly says; marking up a price or a rating that isn't shown invites manual action.
- Rich results are not guaranteed — markup creates eligibility, the engine decides on display.
- For GEO, schema is an enabler rather than a key: it helps generative engines read you correctly but does not on its own get you mentioned.
- Wrong or stale markup is worse than none at all: you are confidently telling machines something untrue.
Where it fits within AI visibility — without the hype — is covered in our GEO guide.
Frequently asked questions
Does schema markup improve my rankings?
Don't think of it as a direct ranking signal. What it does is clarify what the page is and make it eligible for rich result formats, which can lift click-through rate. Its effect comes through visibility on the results page and correct classification rather than through position.
Should I write structured data by hand?
Preferably not. Hand-written markup goes stale as content changes and starts contradicting the page — which is a risk rather than a benefit. The right approach is generating it from the page's own data, so that when a price or a title changes, the markup follows automatically.
Related concepts
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
The discipline of making sure a brand is mentioned accurately, currently and favorably inside answers generated by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI summaries and other generative engines.
Google Search Console
Google's free tool showing a property owner how their content performs in search; the primary source for query, click, impression and indexing data.
Search Engine
A system that crawls the web, indexes what it finds and ranks the best matches for a query; the ground on which a brand is found at the moment of intent.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
The technical and content work that makes a site crawlable, understandable and highly ranked in search engines — and the foundation AI visibility is built on.