Story Based Question
Imagine you’re running a travel news website and just published a story titled, “Top Destinations for Winter 2024 Revealed.” You’re excited to see it rank prominently in search results, but it doesn’t show up in the “Top Stories” carousel. After researching, you discover competitors with similar content using rich snippets, AMP badges, and other features to grab attention. What’s the missing piece? Structured data. To boost your article’s visibility, you need to implement structured data effectively.
Exact Answer
To implement structured data for news articles, use the “NewsArticle” schema from Schema.org. Add it to your HTML in JSON-LD format, including essential properties like headline, publish date, author, and publisher. Test the structured data using Google’s Rich Results Test tool to ensure proper implementation.
Explanation
Structured data bridges the gap between your content and search engines, making it easier for algorithms to understand and rank your news articles. Using the NewsArticle schema, you can specify the key elements of your story, such as:
- Headline: The title of the article.
- Publish Date: When the article was first published.
- Author & Publisher: Information about who created the content.
- Image: A thumbnail representing the article.
Adding this information ensures your articles qualify for enhanced features like “Top Stories” carousels, which can dramatically improve visibility and click-through rates.
Structured data is best implemented in JSON-LD format, as recommended by Google. It’s embedded in the <head> section of your page, making it easy for search engines to parse without affecting your site’s visible content.
Example
Let’s return to your travel news article. Here’s how you’d implement structured data:
- Add JSON-LD Code: Insert the following in the
<head>section of your HTML:
{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “NewsArticle”,
“headline”: “Top Destinations for Winter 2024 Revealed”,
“datePublished”: “2024-12-01T08:00:00Z”,
“dateModified”: “2024-12-01T09:00:00Z”,
“author”: {
“@type”: “Person”,
“name”: “Travel Trends Writer”
},
“publisher”: {
“@type”: “Organization”,
“name”: “Travel News Daily”,
“logo”: {
“@type”: “ImageObject”,
“url”: “https://example.com/logo.png”
}
},
“image”: {
“@type”: “ImageObject”,
“url”: “https://example.com/winter-destinations.jpg”,
“height”: 800,
“width”: 1200
},
“mainEntityOfPage”: {
“@type”: “WebPage”,
“@id”: “https://example.com/top-destinations-winter-2024”
}
} - Test It: Run the page through Google’s Rich Results Test to ensure the structured data is correctly formatted.
- Monitor Performance: Check Google Search Console to confirm indexing and to track how your structured data impacts visibility.
With this setup, your travel article has a better chance of appearing in Google’s “Top Stories” carousel, drawing more clicks and increasing traffic.