;Structured data is code that websites will put into the HTML code that tells search engines how the data is interconnected. This tells Google and other search engines how the keywords on your site are connected to one another. For example an article with a picture in it may contain data in the HTML identifying the picture as the subject of the article. Google can then associate that picture with the person and index it for Google Image search.

Why?

The reason this is becoming increasingly important is how modern websites now operate. They are all pretty much run from databases that pull information onto a page at HTML that can be read by a website browser. Google crawls and reads HTML, but has problems linking all of the information which is inherent in any database. Therefore, schema.org was created to provide information within the HTML that shows Google how each of the fields are connected. This makes it much easier for larger sites like eCommerce sites to accurately categorize its products for Google to put within its index.

Today, we believe that a majority of sites are not using structured data appropriately. Therefore they are not taking advantage of Google using it to index. Sites that start to use not only proper keyword research; but structured data on their site could reap a lot of benefits. Thankfully most modern website content management systems like WordPress and Drupal have add ons the create structured data. Drupal in its Drupal 7 release has structured data fairly native to the core. On the contrary, WordPress has some very good plugins to insert structured data into your site’s HTML.