Why is JSON-LD Important in SEO?
Search engines use web robots known as crawlers to discover and index content on the web. Only indexed content can appear in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
When Google’s crawlers find a new web page, Google’s internal systems analyze the contents of the page to determine its subject matter, how it should be indexed, which keywords it should rank for, and how the page should be presented to users in the SERPs.
Google’s objective is to connect searchers to relevant content that matches the intent of their search, but even Google can be confused when your page contains ambiguous terms.
For example, the header tag <h1>How to Use Drift</h1>, tells Google that this text string is the title of the page, but it doesn’t reveal whether this article is about:
- Using Drift, the SaaS conversational marketing platform,
- Using Drift, the Fortnite character,
- Using Drift to win at Mario Kart, or
- Using Drift in your Subaru Impreza.
The problem here is a lack of context, which makes it more difficult for search engines like Google to connect searchers with relevant and meaningful results that match their search intent.
To address this need for additional context, top search engines (including Google, Bing, and Yahoo) got together in 2011 and began work on Schema.org, a project that would establish a shared vocabulary for SEOs to start adding structured data to their pages in the form of schema mark-up.
With a working knowledge of JSON-LD and the shared vocabulary provided by Schema.org, SEO professionals can add schema mark-up to their pages and provide search engines with the additional context they need to accurately interpret the contents of a page and accurately index it for inclusion in the relevant SERPs.