Structured Content: The Key to a Successful Website

According to Semrush, 50% of brands are still not using structured content. This means that the content a half of businesses out there create isn't reaching relevant people or at least isn't doing it nearly as successfully as it could be.

The online world is more crowded and competitive than ever, making it difficult to stand out and get noticed. And don't get us started with AI stuff that is published/made at a staggering rate. On top of all that, your audience's expectations are higher than ever: they want personalized, relevant, and engaging content everywhere they go online.

All this is made possible with structured content.

Structured content enables you to do more with your content. Not only does it enhance the user experience by providing precise navigation and consistency, but it also improves search engine optimization (SEO) by increasing relevance and improving ranking.

Implementing structured content on your website is becoming a crucial step to drive traffic, engage users, and achieve online success.

But first …

Structured content organizes data in a standardized, reusable format that makes it easier to manage and distribute.

It involves breaking content down into smaller pieces, or chunks, and tagging each chunk with metadata that describes its meaning and context. By structuring content this way, it becomes more flexible and adaptable, allowing it to be repurposed across multiple channels and formats.

Similarly, enter the name of a company like Walmart and notice how Google assembles a knowledge panel on the right, using structured data from various sources to display information such as the company's phone numbers, stock prices, and social channels.

OK. What about the business use perspective? We’re glad you asked. Running a store in multiple languages can be a pain in the a##. Instead of making many changes by hand, structured content allows you to retain content in several languages in one database under the appropriate tag or label. You can also have different descriptions (languages) on one product page, allowing you to manipulate content any way you want.

Those are just some examples of how structured content is used, most of which will positively affect your bottom line.

Let’s break down why structured content is important and how you and your business can benefit from adopting and using it.

Define the Purpose of the Website. First things first: define the purpose of your website. Are you selling a product or a service? Do you want to share your expertise on a particular topic? Or both, or something else instead?

You must have your purpose settled at the beginning to help guide your content and its structure. 

Determine the Target Audience. Now that you have your website's purpose, it's time to determine your target audience.

Who is your content for? What are their interests and needs? How does your website help address them?

If you don't know where to start, don't be afraid to make hypotheses and edit your target audience along the way. But having the target audience defined will help you create relevant content, enabling you to push your business goals forward.

Content Modeling. Content modeling defines the structure of all your product information and marketing content used to market and sell your products or services. Basically, with content modeling, you decide what types of content you need (e.g., blog posts, product pages, case studies, video pages, landing pages, etc.), the structure of it, and the relationships between them.

Develop a Content Strategy and Choose a Platform. With your purpose, target audience, and content models in mind, it's time to develop a content strategy.

This includes determining what types of content you will create, how often you will create content, and who will be responsible for creating and managing the content. Once you have a content strategy in place, you'll need to choose a platform, eCommerce platform, or a content management system (CMS) to help you structure and manage your content.

There are many platforms available, each with its strengths and weaknesses. Some popular CMS options include WordPress, Drupal, and Squarespace, while eCommerce are Shopify, Magento, commerce tools, and Crystallize. However, the architecture of your platform may be even more important than the solution itself. 

For example, structured content works best with a platform relying on headless architecture simply because it delivers on all the promises structured data makes.

With headless commerce or CMS solution, your structured data can be reused across your website and any other channel you connect it through via APIs, making for an incredible, unified experience.

Be that as it may, due to the underlying complexity, it can definitely be overkill for some businesses, so it's best that you first talk to your team of web developers before delving further into this territory.

As the internet grows even faster and new devices increasingly get online, getting your content in front of the right sets of eyes will become even harder. That’s where structured content comes into play, helping you future-proof your business.

With it, you can increase the efficiency of creating and managing content. Because it is easily repurposed, you can significantly reduce the time and effort needed to create new content.

Whatmore you’ll be ensuring consistency across your website (and any other channels you may opt to use), thereby increasing user trust, improving the user experience, and ultimately raking in more revenue.

Finally, your target users can easily navigate your website, find what they need, and leave with a smile on their faces, ensuring user engagement and loyalty.

In addition to the users, search engines will also like your website. You’ll rank higher, your content will be more readily available, and it will be served to the right people.

Sure! It may take time to implement, and it’s not the easiest of tasks, but it’s definitely a worthwhile investment.

We excel at content modeling capabilities. Seriously, we do!

START building for FREE with Crystallize, or schedule a 1-on-1 demo so we can show you if and how Crystallize content modeling capabilities fit your use case.