The most used search engine, Google, relies on structured data to understand the content of web pages. There are several formats for structuring data. The ones most recognized by Google are: JSON-LD, RDFa and Microdata.
But, which one does it prefer the most? And what is the difference between them?
What is JSON-LD structured data?
JSON-LD, or JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data, is a method of implementing structured data. It is used to communicate information to search engines using a data language, especially schema.org.
It is a method based on JSON (a textual data format derived from JavaScript) to encode structured data. It has several advantages that differentiate it from other formats:
The data is separated from the HTML tags. Therefore, it is very easy to use.
- It can be placed anywhere on an HTML page, whether in the head or the body.
- It can be added as soon as a web page is loaded or generated, which makes it easier to add, update and delete.
- What is Microdata structured data?
Microdata
is an HTML specification from WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) . This format is used to provide metadata about the content of a web page, while providing ameta tag syntax. Search engine robots can therefore easily interpret it. Microdata data is published in body tags. It is structured using a vocabulary, in the form of groups of name-value pairs.Also note that
RDFa
is an HTML5 extension recommended by W3C . It implies structured data in the HTML contentlike Microdata. What type of structured data does Google prefer? Implementing
Microdata
and RDFa is no longer recommended. In fact, this technique makes the code heavier and makes it less readable. Today, JSON-LD
has become the preferred format for users and search engines, especially Google. This format allows metadata to be implemented separately as a script in the desired location. It is not necessary to integrate them into the HTML code , as with the Microdata and RDFa formats. Google can read the data underJSON-LD format
since they are dynamically injected into the content of a page. Therefore, he will perform a well-trained, orderly and clean script. It provides your pages, which are marked up with structured data in the format JSON-LD
, the chance to appear in relevant searches. Implement structured data via JSON-LDGoogle explicitly recommends integrating structured data
via JSON-LD
. To add this data, there are different ways to do it, depending on the structure of the site and the markup:Editing URLs individually.
Using plugins or scripts that apply code with mass deployment.
- There are free tools that automatically add tags for structured data, such as
- Yoast SEO plugin
of WordPress . You can configure them yourself or call on a SEO agencyto do it.
