In terms of SEO, ‘structured data’ means marking up a webpage’s HTML to offer detailed information about the content of that particular page. This is made understandable by computers and people.

Different types of structured data are available. You must have heard about the Facebook Open Graph markup. When we talk about structured data for SEO, it means that we are referring to ‘Schema.org.’

Apart from Schema.org, there are several other vocabularies that can be used. Some websites make use of micro-formats.org vocabulary. This type of vocabulary is used while defining a physical location with respect to an individual or an organisation.

Schema.org refers to a particular vocabulary that is used to mark up this content. There are several ways of implementing this mark up. One of the commonest one is by using micro-data format. It uses HTML elements for embedding data in a page. The structured data is integrated inside the main HTML of the page.

In the recent times, additional support is provided for JSON-LD implementation. This enables the user to place the mark up in the head of the page. This is a simpler kind of implementation. It is a preferred choice of many users as it is supported for all the Knowledge Graph features and others. Website owners should focus on improving the machine-readability to prepare for the future landscape of search.