web dev//SEO//structured data

Structured data is machine-readable metadata embedded in HTML that describes the content's meaning: not just what it looks like, but what it *is*. Its primary format is JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) in a `<script type="application/ld+json">` block, preferred by Google over microdata or RDFa, and its vocabulary is schema.org, a shared set of types (Article, Person, Organization, BreadcrumbList, etc.) that search engines and AI systems understand.

Structured data is machine-readable metadata embedded in HTML that describes the content's meaning: not just what it looks like, but what it is. Its primary format is JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) in a <script type="application/ld+json"> block, preferred by Google over microdata or RDFa, and its vocabulary is schema.org, a shared set of types (Article, Person, Organization, BreadcrumbList, etc.) that search engines and AI systems understand.

It enables rich snippets in Google (star ratings, recipe cards, FAQ dropdowns), knowledge graph entries and a better AI understanding of the page.

For AEO it tells AI crawlers the relationships between entities: a ProfilePage with Person schema lets an LLM know that the page describes a human, not a product.

The common schemas are Article (blog posts), ProfilePage with Person (about pages), WebSite (homepage), BreadcrumbList (navigation path), FAQPage and HowTo.