Implement valid Article structured data

Rule Details

Structured data provides explicit clues about the meaning of a page to search engines, enabling enhanced features in search results.

Code Example

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "BlogPosting",
  "headline": "10 SEO Tips for 2024",
  "image": ["https://example.com/photos/16x9/photo.jpg"],
  "datePublished": "2024-01-05T08:00:00+08:00",
  "dateModified": "2024-01-05T09:20:00+08:00",
  "author": [{
      "@type": "Person",
      "name": "Jane Doe",
      "url": "https://example.com/profile/janedoe"
    }]
}
</script>

Why It Matters

• Rich Results: Enables headlines, images, and author info to appear directly in search results.
• Google Discover: Properly marked-up articles are much more likely to be featured in user-personalized feeds.
• Author Attribution: Helps search engines connect the content to a specific author's entity.
• CTR Improvement: Rich snippets often have a higher click-through rate than plain text results.

Exceptions

• Only add or enforce schema types that the page can truthfully support; irrelevant structured data is worse than no structured data.
• A technically valid schema block can still be misleading if the page content does not visibly back it up; audit rendered content and schema together.
• If indexability, canonical-url, or main content quality is wrong, fix that foundation before optimizing schema details.

Standards

• Use these references as the standard for the final search-facing HTML, metadata, and crawl behavior.
• Check the implementation against Google Search Central: Search Essentials before treating the rule as satisfied.
• Check the implementation against Google Search Central documentation before treating the rule as satisfied.

Verification

Automated Checks

• Inspect rendered HTML and HTTP headers to confirm the expected metadata or crawlability signal is present.
• Test the affected URL with Google Search Console or equivalent tooling where relevant.
• Re-crawl a representative page set after deployment.

Manual Checks

• Confirm the change does not create conflicting canonical-url, robots, or structured-data signals.