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Written By

I am Arun Kothapally. I help ambitious companies scale their organic growth. Over the last 11 years, I have helped companies like Practo, Flipkart, JioCinema, Edureka, Noon, and Treebo acquire millions of users by building organic growth engines.

Throughout my career in growth, I have had the privilege of working directly with some of the best product and marketing teams. Working with companies of different sizes and various marketing channels and platforms has opened my mind to understanding "how things work".
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When I'm away from work, I'm usually outdoors, trekking, practicing yoga, traveling, or reading. I drop by Bangalore and Hyderabad at times, but I usually work remotely.

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Structured Data for SEO: Examples and Case Studies

  • Writer: Arun Kothapally
    Arun Kothapally
  • Jul 13
  • 3 min read

Updated: Jul 21

If Google is a reader, structured data is the highlighter. It tells search engines what's important and what type of content they're looking at, with precision.

Why Structured Data Matters

Structured data (aka Schema Markup) helps Google understand the context of your page. It doesn’t just crawl the words; it understands the entities behind them.

Used right, it:

  • Improves click-through rates (CTR) via rich results/snippets

  • Boosts trust via clarity (FAQs, Reviews, Products)

  • Helps qualify for SERP features (How-to, Recipe, Event, etc.)

  • Future-proofs your SEO by aligning with entity-based search

Structured data won’t directly increase rankings, but it improves visibility, engagement, and semantic understanding, which indirectly support rankings.


What is Structured Data and Schema Markup?

Structured data refers to organized pieces of information in the form of code snippets that help search engines better understand the content of a webpage. Schema markup (from Schema.org) is the vocabulary or language used to define that structure. The Schema was created by Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and Yandex in 2011 to standardize structured data for content such as reviews, products, articles, and more. Schema is the language, and structured data is the data written in that language.


Why It Matters for SEO

  1. Improved Search Engine Understanding

  2. Boosted CTR via Rich Results

  3. Supports E-E-A-T and Entity Recognition

  4. Enhanced Visibility Across Google Products

  5. Optimizes for Voice Search

  6. Better Integration with Social Media and Email


Examples:

  • Rotten Tomatoes: +25% CTR

  • Food Network: +35% traffic after markup

  • Nestlé: +82% CTR on rich result pages


Supported Structured Data Formats

  1. JSON-LD (Google’s preferred)

  2. Microdata

  3. RDFa

JSON-LD is easiest to scale and least error-prone.


Types I Recommend (and Use Regularly)

  • Article / BlogPosting

  • FAQPage

  • Product

  • BreadcrumbList

  • LocalBusiness

  • VideoObject / HowTo / Event (where applicable)

  • Organization / Person / Review / Course


Best Practices I Follow

  1. Use Google’s guidelines, not just schema.org

  2. Prefer JSON-LD, avoid Microdata unless necessary

  3. Don’t overmark up—align to what’s visible on the page

  4. Validate via Rich Results Test and Schema Markup Validator

  5. Keep it updated as content changes

  6. Use sameAs to reinforce entity relationships

  7. Be mobile-first: structured data must match on mobile and desktop

  8. For YMYL: Use reviewedBy, show credentials

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Implementation Methods

  • Manual JSON-LD insertion

  • Generators (Google, Merkle, etc.)

  • CMS plugins (Yoast, Rank Math, Schema Pro)

  • Google Tag Manager (less ideal, but acceptable now)

  • Page template mapping for scale


Developer Handoff Template

  1. Purpose: "Add Product structured data to PDP pages for Rich Snippets."

  2. Format: JSON-LD

  3. Fields Required: name, price, availability, etc.

  4. Sample Snippet: Include working JSON

  5. Validation: Rich Results Test URL

  6. Deployment Plan: Dev > Stage > QA > Live


Validation & Monitoring

  • Google Rich Results Test

  • Schema Markup Validator

  • Google Search Console Enhancements Report

  • Search Appearance filters in GSC

  • Screaming Frog / Sitebulb for large-scale audits


Watchout For

  • Don’t mark up invisible content

  • Don’t create fake FAQs or reviews

  • Avoid duplicate org markup on every page

  • Google may ignore structured data on homepages


Structured Data Field Notes

✅ 1. EdTech Platform

  • Structured Data Added:

    • FAQPage, Article, BreadcrumbList

  • Objective:

    • Enhance content understanding and win rich results for long-form blog posts.

  • Impact:

    • +18% increase in CTR across educational blog pages.

    • Improved ranking on long-tail queries due to better SERP visibility.


✅ 2. OTT Platform

  • Structured Data Added:

    • ItemList for show listings, VideoObject for top shows and episodes

  • Objective:

    • Improve the discoverability of video content in Google search and Google Images.

  • Impact:

    • Video snippets began appearing for high-volume queries.

    • Carousel previews led to more content getting featured in Top Stories/video-rich sections.


Final Word

Structured data is not a magic trick—it’s a clarifier.

Done well, it makes your content easier to understand, rank, and click. I help teams build scalable SEO systems. Structured data is one of the lowest-effort, highest-leverage tools we have.

“If SEO is a conversation with Google, structured data is speaking its native language.”

 
 
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