Three easy ways to implement essential structure data categories on Wordpress

Three easy ways to implement essential structure data categories on Wordpress

Schema.org Structured Data is a mix of different vocabularies developed with the help of all major search engines (Yahoo, Yandex, Bing, and Google) for a better understanding of the content a webpage holds. Therefore Structure Data is added to a page HTML containing very specific information a search engine can read and sort out.

I mainly used Schema structure data with JSON-LD, but it can also be used with RDFa. To my shame, I only started to explore and test Schema and structure data categories in the last two years. But I've learned a lot and managed to implement basic schema items of a lot of WordPress websites in a few different ways.

First of all, you need to understand the importance of Schema and Structure data. Just know this: if you ever want to aspire to rich snippets in Google results, you will need to implement structure data. Sure, sometimes Google doesn't need Schema to implement feature snippets and rich snippets, but most of the time, it does! To relly on Google to pick up rich snippets on its own, because most certainly it won't!

Here are the top and most simple ways to implement Schema Structure Data with JSON-LD on WordPress:

1. Use Markup (JSON-LD) structured in schema.org - Wordpress Plugin

You can find it here: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-structuring-markup/

Probably the best Schema Wordpress plugin available right now! When configured correctly it will simply not fail, and you won't get any errors in the Google Structured Data testing tool.

It has the following categories of Schema items that you can enable only if you actually need them:

• Article - Works great for any article type content page.
  
• BlogPosting - It is essential to have if you have blog posts! It works excellent with AMP if implemented correctly, I manage to gain lots of Google rich snippets + amp results with a picture when having this on.
  
• BreadcrumbList - Just enable it, works for most sites.
  
• Event - Enable this if you have special event pages.
  
• LocalBusiness - This is essential for local SEO, make sure you get all the info just right.
  
• NewsArticle - Covering news? Have this on if you do.
  
• Organization - An opportunity to provide search engines with more information about your organization, enable it!
  
• Person - Works excellent on CV pages, about pages and author pages.
  
• SiteNavigation - Every site needs it, enable it.
  
• Video - When you want to outline a particular video on a page.
  
• Website - Every website should have this. Make sure you don't have one already before enable it, most Wordpress themes have "website."
  

The only downside of the plugin is the conflicts it often haves on multi-language based websites or multi-sites type WordPress installations. This is often the case with some of my clients, so I needed to find a good alternative.

2. Implementing basic JSON-LD structure data with Google Tag Manager.

If you have a simple website without a blog or article section, implementing structure data with the help of Google Tag Manager, is simple, elegant and fast.

Not to mention the fact that you will be one Wordpress plugin less and we all know how good of a thing that is!

All you need is access to Google Tag Manager, and some basic understand of GTM. If you manage to install Google Analytics with GTM, you are going to be fine. Just create a new tag, name "Schema" set a trigger for all pages and as tag configuration choose "Custom HTML tag."

Create your Structure Data markups with the help of generators like this one here: https://www.jamesdflynn.com/json-ld-schema-generator/

Just past the results from the generator into the custom HTML tag from GTM and hit publish. That's it! You are not good to go, test everything with https://search.google.com/structur...-tool/u/0/?hl=ro and make sure you don't have any errors.

The basic Schema category items you can implement with GTM are: Person, Website, Local Business, Organization, Event, Product and that's about it. I managed to also implement Video and other unusual stuff on particular pages.

But the problem with GTM Schema implementation is that you can't install "Article" and "BlogPosting" type categories because these require a custom dynamic generation, which GTM as far as I know, is incapable off. You need to do it directly in the Wordpress Theme with the help of a developer, or you can install a plugin like the one I just talked about.

3. Schema - Wordpress Plugin

Yes! Another WordPress plugin. This one is a little different, and I only use it in combination with Google Tag Manager when the first plugin is incompatible with various other plugins or conflicts.

It isn't the best solution from my point of view, but it can be useful enough.

The main downside I have with this plugin is the structure data errors I got on some websites where I installed it. To be fair, just a few had problems, overall, it worked well. So you may want to test it first.

You can find it here: https://wordpress.org/plugins/schema/

Has a few features that aren't available on the JSON-LD plugin, stuff like: Schema Review, Schema default image, Knowledge Graph and Search Box.