Definition
Structured data describes a page's content in a format machines read without ambiguity: who publishes, what kind of page it is, which product is offered and at what price. The shared vocabulary is called schema.org, and Google recommends the JSON-LD format, a block of code placed in the page without changing how it looks.
It makes a page eligible for some Google rich results. It is not a condition for AI Overviews, for which Google requires no special markup, and FAQ rich results have not shown in Google since 7 May 2026.
Value for a business owner
A well-described organisation (exact name, logo, address, official profiles) gives search engines and assistants an identity card consistent with the rest of the web. An offer marked up with its price saves a machine from guessing it or reading it from an old page.
At Stratedge Consulting
Every page of this site declares the organisation, the breadcrumb, the articles with their author and the offers with their price; the markup is generated from the content, which keeps it up to date. See the SEO and AI visibility page.
Common mistakes
Marking up content the reader cannot see. Google asks for structured data to reflect the visible content of the page.
Leaving an outdated price or address in the markup after a site update. Hand-written markup always ends up drifting from the text; markup generated from the content avoids the gap.