3 Ways Google Wants Subscription Box Companies To Use Structured Data

Google recently had their io conference for developers where they announce all the latest changes they are making across their many product lines including search.  The session on changes in search focused very strongly on schema aka structured data.

Schema is code that is only visible to search engines.  Schema is used to help explain more about a particular thing in a structured manner that the search engine can quickly and easily digest because it is data that is structured in a consistent way.

When it comes to search Google usually gives very broad information about how the search engine algorithm works.  So when they give direct and specific information, if you want to have increased search visibility, you’ll follow and do what they say.

During this year’s Google io and the session Google Search: State of the Union, John Mueller and Martin Splitt gave us some very specific things to do to improve search visibility.  While they didn’t mention subscription box companies specifically, we picked out three items they mentioned that will definitely help organic search visibility for subscription box companies.

So let’s dive right in.

Product Schema – Since you are selling a product, this schema definitely makes sense to use on your website.  The required elements are just the name and an image but there are many more you can use to help increase organic search visibility for your subscription box.

There are other properties you should include in your product schema.  Description is an important property because it can appear in the search results in a variety of ways.

You can also include your brand, reviews, offers, pricing, and even product availability.

For details about Product structured data click here.

Images – Google is putting a special focus on images. They prefer that you use images that look good on the wide variety of screens. You can use <picture> and srcset to display the correct image for the correct screen size.  You can check out this page for the details of how to implement.

Google is also changing how images look on mobile. Images will now be shown with more text and more context.

This example shows the difference between the searcher intent of buying a tire swing or how to build one. 

John Mueller was speaking about images on web pages and said that relevant text around an image near the top of the page is better for search visibility. Don’t embed text in an image. Use structured data (schema) that include images.  And use descriptive file names and URL structure.

Recently there has been a big jump in the number of mobile image thumbnails showing in the search engine results pages. Almost half of mobile page one results are displaying mobile image thumbnails.

Those kinds of numbers just reinforce how important properly tagged images can be to your organic search engine optimization efforts.

Recipe Schema – This one will only be applicable for food subscription boxes. Using recipe schema can help you show up for a variety of rich results in search and image search. You also can help Google Assistant return your content for voice searches.

Plus you can use structured data on your recipe summary pages to return a carousel of rich results.  

If you’re using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) structured data for recipes can enable instant-loading recipes.

You can find details about implementing Recipe structured data here.

Structured data is becoming more and more important to Google, and it should be important to any subscription box website. Structured data makes it much easier for Google to understand your products and content.

If you need help with a structured data strategy for your subscription box website, we can help.  Reach out to us at (973) 770-4668.