Structured Data Without a Developer

What it is, plainly

A page tells a human what your business does through words and layout.

Structured data tells a machine the same things in a fixed format: this is the business name, this is the address, these are the opening hours, this is the price.

It sits in the page's code, invisible to visitors, and removes the need for anything to interpret your wording.

The practical benefit is that search results can display more: hours, ratings, prices, or a set of questions and answers, which occupies more space and answers more before anybody clicks.

The three worth having

• Local business: name, address, phone, hours, area served.
• FAQ: questions and answers already on the page.
• Product or service: what you offer and what it costs.

For most small businesses those three cover everything worth doing, and the first is the one that earns its place most reliably because it feeds the information customers search for.

You do not write it yourself

The point of this article, since structured data has a reputation for being a developer subject.

Most platforms handle it through a plugin or a settings screen: you fill in your business details in ordinary fields, and the markup is generated and added to every page.

Many themes include it already, and some platforms produce local business markup automatically from information you entered when the site was built.

So the first step is to find out what your site already outputs, since adding a second source produces duplicate and conflicting markup, which is worse than none.

Only where nothing exists is there a decision to make about how to add it.

Check what you already have

Two free tools answer this and both take a minute.

The rich results test reports whether a page is eligible for enhanced display and what type it detected.

A schema validator reports everything present on the page, including markup you did not know was there, and lists errors and warnings separately.

Run both on your homepage and one service page.

Errors are worth fixing and warnings are usually optional fields you have not filled in, which is a distinction that saves a lot of unnecessary work.

Keep it true

The rule that matters more than any technical detail.

Structured data must describe what is actually on the page and actually true of the business.

Hours in the markup that differ from the hours on the page, a rating not based on real reviews, or FAQ markup for questions not visible to a visitor are all misuse, and the penalty is losing the enhanced display entirely.

The FAQ case is the one businesses get wrong innocently: the questions and answers have to be present on the page for a person to read, not only in the code.

Where the markup and the page disagree, fix the markup rather than the page, since the page is what customers see.

A worked example

A trades business added a plugin to manage structured data, filling in name, address, hours, and service area.

The validator then reported two sets of local business markup on every page: one from the plugin and one the theme had been adding since the site was built, with a different phone number and hours from two years earlier.

Neither was wrong when it was created, and together they were contradictory.

They disabled the theme's version, kept the plugin, and added FAQ markup to three service pages using questions already on those pages.

Within a few weeks two of those pages began showing question and answer entries in results.

The useful finding was the duplicate, which they would not have known about without running the validator first.

It does not improve rankings directly

Worth stating, because the subject attracts inflated claims.

Structured data is not a ranking factor in the way that content quality or links are, and adding it will not move a page up by itself.

What it can do is change how a result appears, which affects how many people choose it, and that is a real benefit measured in clicks rather than positions.

Enhanced display is also never guaranteed: valid markup makes a page eligible, and whether anything is shown is decided case by case.

Treat it as improving how you are presented rather than how you are ranked, and the expectation will match the outcome.

Keep it current

The maintenance point, which is small and genuinely forgotten.

Structured data is entered once and then becomes wrong in the ordinary way: hours change, a phone number changes, prices move, a service is dropped.

Because it is invisible on the page, nobody notices, and the site can display correct hours while telling machines something two years out of date.

Add it to whatever annual check you already do, alongside the footer year and the contact details.

Rerun the validator after any rebuild or theme change, since those are the moments a second source appears or the existing one disappears.

The counter-case

This is a modest improvement and should not displace larger work.

A business with thin content, no reviews, and an incomplete listing will gain far more from those than from markup, and structured data on a weak page produces a slightly better-presented weak page.

There is also a cost to getting it wrong: duplicate or contradictory markup, or markup that does not match the page, can remove eligibility that ordinary correct pages would have had.

And for a very simple site with one page and no products, the whole subject may amount to confirming the business details are present and leaving it.

Do the listing, the reviews, and the content first. Then add three types of markup and check them once a year.

What to do

1. Run a validator before adding anything.
2. Find any markup your theme already outputs.
3. Avoid two sources producing conflicting details.
4. Add local business markup first.
5. Add FAQ markup only for questions visible on the page.
6. Fix errors, ignore most warnings.
7. Recheck annually and after any rebuild.

Step one prevents the most common outcome, which is two sets of markup disagreeing about your own phone number.

Choosing which questions to answer is covered in the question you answer on every phone call.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.