SEO for Solos
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Chapter 03Paid

Structured data

JSON-LD that describes a page to a machine. What the 42 types are for, which ones earned their place, and why optional fields must be omitted rather than emitted empty.

5 min read · updated 2026-07-26· last reviewed 2026-07-26

Structured data does not make a page rank. It makes a page legible: it turns prose a parser has to guess at into assertions a parser can read. Two things follow from that. First, the return is largest where the page's meaning is hardest to infer from the text, which is why it matters more on a product page than on an essay. Second, an assertion that is wrong is worse than no assertion, because you have now told a machine something false in a form it trusts.

The practical consequence for a large site is that structured data is a data modelling exercise, not a markup exercise. If you find yourself writing JSON-LD by hand per page, the model is wrong.

The rest of "Structured data"

1,094 words covering 4 sections, with the implementation code for 15 checks. The table of contents below is the full outline, so you can see exactly what is behind this.

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What this chapter covers

  • What structured data is actually for
    • The principle
    • The implementation
  • The types that earned their place
    • The principle
    • What produced a visible result
    • What produced nothing measurable
  • FAQ schema, and the line you must not cross
    • The principle
    • The implementation
  • Breadcrumbs, in schema and in the page
    • The principle
    • The implementation

Checks this chapter covers

Each one has a command you can run against your own site.