When it comes to writing your own structured data, it can be daunting and frustrating to start with, but there are some distinct advantages compared to using a plugin such as Yoast SEO.
Once you get better at writing your own, you can even “write around” plugins like Yoast, so that you can have the best of both worlds – automated structured data for things like articles and products, and bespoke custom structured data for all of your other pages!
- Flexibility: You can tailor your structured data to your website, so that it perfectly matches exactly what markup you want to add. Plugins, on the other hand, are often restricted to certain content types and you can’t customise what they output.
- No errors: When you write your own structured data, you have complete control over whether or not it validates (within reason e.g. Google’s guidelines). You can check it with multiple testing tools, unlike plugin-generated structured data, which often contains errors or warnings.
- Wider Schema Coverage: There are hundreds of different schema types available, each designed to represent a specific type of content. With custom-written structured data, you can use as many of these as you like (used strategically, of course). Plugins typically limit you to just one or two schema types per page and a restricted set overall, which is rubbish if you have lots of different types of content on the same page, e.g videos, products and reviews.
- Create Relationships: The whole point of structured data is that is creates relationships between your business, services, products and the content on your website. By adding things like @id’s, you can control those relationships. Plugins typically either don’t use the @id properly, or if they do, it doesn’t link specific pages and other products together.
- One Size (Doesn’t) Fit All: If you write it yourself, your structured data will be unique to your website. It reflects your specific content and brand identity, unlike the generic, one-size-fits-all approach of plugins. This uniqueness can help you differentiate yourself from competitors in search results. (WIN!)
- Entity-Based Structured Data: At the time of writing, there are only 2 plugins that I know of that can add entity-based structured data into your website, and they are Wordlift and Inlinks (which are great). However, these do not create the same relationships between your brand and the entities within your content. Most other WordPress or other CMS plugins don’t possess the understanding of entity relationships and therefore don’t add any entities into your structured data. I’ve seen AMAZING results from adding entities into structured data, as much as 90% for some big websites!
- Add Extra Information: Sometimes there are ambiguous entities within your content that Google might not understand from just reading it, as although it is brilliant at it, sometimes it gets it wrong. For example, “wrap” could mean many different things; a sandwich wrap, cling film, clothing wrap or wrapping a present. Custom structured data allows you to tell search engines important context that they might otherwise miss. This can help search engines understand your content better and potentially index your site faster.
- Better CTR with Rich Results: Structured data can significantly increase click-through rates (CTRs) in search results by enabling rich results like product listings, review stars, featured snippets, and more. Studies show that around 58% of users click on rich results in search engine results pages (SERPs).
- Boosting E-E-A-T: Entity-based SEO strengthens your brand identity by highlighting your Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) to search engines. Custom structured data allows you to showcase reviews, awards, and information about your team members, all of which contribute to a stronger E-E-A-T profile. For one of my customers, custom structured data on their “About Us” page led to a 74% increase in clicks and a 25% increase in impressions within two weeks, along with improved rankings for relevant topics, even outranking the NHS website in some instances!
Probably the most important thing to remember about structured data and SEO is that it doesn’t guarantee results, but it can really help your SEO.
Categories: SEO
