Structured Data For Shopify : The Ultimate Guide

A screenshot of a Google search results page, May 21, 2020

This is what we know as rich results or a rich snippet. Typical search results offer fewer data than rich results. For instance, with typical results come usual data like title, meta description, and URL of a webpage, but rich snippets bring us additional data that includes product ratings, price ranges, and more. It appears just like the above screenshot.

As an owner of your Shopify store, you have a similar interest for Google to suggest rich snippets for your store. To implement this, it is crucial to add structured data markup to your website. However, remember that it is none less than a hassle.

You need to have skills in Shopify Liquid, HTML, JSON-LD, and schema.org. However, even for an experienced Shopify developer, it is challenging to know and implement the exact type of data and properties in the Shopify store.

At HulkApps, we provide expert services for Structured Data & Schema Markup Setup for Shopify merchants, enabling them to add structured data to their Shopify stores regularly. This article will bring our expertise and experience to help you improve your understanding of structured data and show you ways to implement them.

Apart from this, if you need specific schema.org data properties to add to your resources, we will help you do that. You can add it to the Shopify homepage, collection, product, and article pages.

After you read this guide, it feels simple and fast to implement structured data as we have put here all the right details.

What is Structured Data & how can it benefit you?

The screenshot below is a structured data markup.

And this is how it looks when you implement structured data markup:

Search engines can find structured data markup valuable in finding more information about the website and its related content. As you implement structured data, it helps sieve information for Google that encompasses ecommerce data such as quality ranking, price tags, and product reviews.

You can also enable Google to harness information related to your business containing your business logo, address, contact, and social media pages, among others.

Why is it critical that Google recommends such information?

Using structured Data is essential for search engines and web systems to analyze your website better. It enables Google to improve the accuracy rate in analyzing your website and provide complete detail about your web pages.

Also, structured data is key to creating rich snippets. Simultaneously, Google can easily automate the product feed for Google Shopping Ads by using structured markup data.

Side Note
Google refrains from making any confirmation about creating rich snippets even if webpages are marked up with structured data. An explicit statement can be found in Google's Structured Data Guidelines:

Here’s a visual:

But if your website ingests structured data markup, in most cases, Google provides your website with rich snippets and it is usual.

Structured Data Formats & Schemas

Structured Data Formats

According to the Google Webmaster Blog, a small line of fixed data structures that helps encode descriptive data is structured data formats.

Structured data formats comprise three types, including,

• JSON-LD
• Microdata
• RDFa

Google’s favorite data structured format is JSON-LD.

Google recommends using JSON-LD for structured data.

Source: Google, Understand how structured data

The takeaway: If you are prefer using RDFa or Microdata, Google recommends JSON-LD migration. The reason is that JSON-LD is fast and easy to add to your website, and you can make flexible updates. Apart from being dynamic data compatible, it reduces the effort to work with HTML codes to display structured data's whereabouts.

Here’s how a JSON-LD shows up on a product page:

                <script id="productLd" type="application/ld+json">
                {
                    "@context": "http://schema.org/",
                    "@type": "Product",
                    "name": "Shopify Structured Data for E-commerce",
                    "image": "https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1564/7647/products/StructuredDataforE-commerce_600x600.jpg?v=1587479185",
                    "sku": "",
                    "description": "In an SEO setting, &quot;structured data&quot; ordinarily alludes to actualizing a few sorts of markup on a webpage, in order to supply extra detail around the page’s substance. This mar...",
                    "brand": {
                    "@type": "Thing",
                    "name": "HulkApps"
                    },
                    "offers": {
                    "@type": "Offer",
                    "priceCurrency": "USD",
                    "price": "149.0",
                    "priceValidUntil" : "2020-08-19",
                    "url" : "https://www.hulkapps.com/products/structured-data-for-e-commerce",
                    "availability": "http://schema.org/InStock"
                    },
                    "review": {
                    "@type": "Review",
                    "reviewRating": {
                        "@type": "Rating",
                        "worstRating": "0",
                        "ratingValue": 5,
                        "bestRating": "5"
                    },
                    "author": {
                    "@type": "Person"
                    }
                }
                }</script>
            

With JSON-LD implemented on your Shopify store, it helps search engines like Google detect products and offer data. As a result, it boosts organic search results and traffic.

Structured Data Schemas

Different terms and properties such as ‘website,’ ‘organization,’ ‘person,’ ‘description,’ ‘logo,’ and ‘name’ include structured data schemas. They include,

• data-vocabulary.org
• schema.org

Data-vocabulary.org is out of date. On and after 29, 2021, data-vocabulary.org will no longer provide support for Google to parse rich results features.

The takeaway: If you’re using data-vocabulary.org, you must replace your data-vocabulary.org markup with schema.org markup.

Now that you know what structured data is, why you should use it, and the chosen structured data format (JSON-LD) and schema (schema.org) for Google, let’s see what it needs to implement structured data.

Key considerations before implementing structured data

Follow these three crucial things.

• Carefully read Google's Webmaster Guidelines & General Structured Data Guidelines for details.
  .

• Mark your primary page types. In Shopify, primary pages include the homepage, collection, blog, articles, and product page.
• Decide what each of your Shopify pages, i.e., homepage, product pages, or collection pages, should contain types and properties from schema.org. For example, the below screenshot is how a structured data markup should look.

Source: schema.org, Product, Example 2, JSON-LD

Please look at the screenshot: it clearly shows that structured data encompasses types. Each type contains a set of properties. Product type has a set of common properties such as description, productID, name, weight, mpn, and height, etc.

Each type represents other types in the hierarchy. For instance, the Product type can include some Offer types. Your product variants are part of Offer types that have different properties such as availability, price, and so on.

“The fundamentals of schema.org now incorporate 615 Types, 901 Properties, and 114 Enumeration Values.”

Only a few numbers of Types, Properties, and Enumerations are available. But before we do anything with Types and Properties for our Shopify pages, it is vital to know ways to implement structured data in the HTML.

What are the ways to incorporate structured data into the Shopify website?

To incorporate structured data into the HTML of your Shopify store, you can find two ideal methods:

• If you are a skilled HTML developer, you can prefer manual iterations. It needs you to be aware of programming languages like Shopify Liquid, HTML, schema.org, and JSON-LD. However, if you do not possess such skills or lack an in-house team to help you with the implementation, prefer not to do this. This is because manual efforts can expose your website to bugs and other errors. 

• Shopify experts are of great help. Other than this, you can outsource the service. We at HulkApps offer a wide range of SEO services such as SEO audit, Structured data optimization, Shopify site speed optimization, TF-IDF Reporting, etc. If it interests you, contact us. 

Read the article below to get the most profound insights into how to add the structured data to the web pages of your Shopify store.

Learn How to Add Structured Data to Boost your Store's SEO

Now that you are aware of your choices for implementing structured data in the HTML of your Shopify store, let's take a closer look at the various forms and properties of schema.org data you need to apply to the different pages on your website.

What does your Shopify homepage contain as structured data markup?

There are two types of data to add to your homepage:

• WebSite
• Organization

WebSite

Schema.org defines 'WebSite' as a set of related web pages that usually share the same domain. You have to include the following properties in the WebSite data type:

• URL - your website's URL
• target - "Indicates a target EntryPoint for an Action" (source: schema.org)
• query-input - this is a text search deep link with -input that inlines "the resulting value of -input properties into action URLs" (source: schema.org)

Organization

For example, Store, SportsOrganization, Corporation, LocalBusiness, BikeShop, BookStore, WorkersUnion, hardware store, etc. Note that the more specific the Organization type is, the better. You have to include the following properties in the Organization data type:

• name - your Shopify store or website's name
• url - your website's URL
• description - a description of your business (who you are, what you do/sell, how your product/service benefits customers, etc.)
• logo - Google displays your logo in search results and in the Knowledge Graph

• image
• sameAs - links to your social media profiles (Facebook business page, Twitter profile, YouTube account, Instagram account, etc.)
• address (PostalAddres) - streetAddress (street and number), addressLocally (city), postalCode, address Country (country)

Other than this information, information like contact information or price range (priceRange) or contact information and geolocation is useful.

What structured data markup to add to your Shopify product pages?

You need to use three kinds of structured data for your product pages:

• Product
• Offer
• BreadcrumbList

Product

The product type refers to products, including SKU, size, barcode, etc. The product variant encompasses the offer type. For one kind of product, there needs to be one type of offer for the product variant. If a product variant is unavailable, other properties can refer to price, barcode, and SKU. Shopify ingests all these details as a default variant. The variant can act as your offer type in your Shopify store.

Required properties

• offers - variants of products
• name - product name
• image - Link of the product photo or imageObject

Recommended properties

• brand
• review
• productID
• description
• aggregateRating
• gtin8/gtin13/gtin14/isbn/mpn - global identifier or unique product identifiers

The recommended properties you use for your Shopify store help Google work with your product search queries.

You can use GTIN or Global Trade Item Number as a barcode and utilize it with your product variant. The GTIN performs both as MPN and productID.

Offer

The type of offer data (Essential properties)

• Price
• availability (OutOfStock, InStock)
• priceCurrency

Suggested properties

• url (the product page URL)
• priceValidUntil (ISO 8601 date format)
• itemOffered
• Sku
• itemCondition

BreadcrumbList

Your product pages must outstand. Breadcrumb helps you add a markup to your product pages. Doing so helps you Google categorize the product pages. BreadcrumbList is the markup type that the product page must contain. BreadcrumbList must include one type ListItem with the following properties,

• id
• position
• item
• name

What structured data to choose for Shopify collection pages?

The CollectionPage type, including ListItem type are part of the collection page.

CollectionPage

Recommended properties for collection page

• url - the collection page url
• description - collection page description
• name- collection page name
• image- collection page primary image

ListItem

• url- the product page url
• position- the place value of the product within the collection page. If the product comes at the third position, it is place value is ‘3.’

Side Note:
Make sure your collection pages include the breadcrumb markup. On breadcrumb markup, you can find the markup section for the product page.

What type of structured data does your Shopify blog page include?

• url- the blog url
• name- the blog name
• about- the blog description including the subject line to help readers comprehend the matter.
• keywords- your target keyword

The BlogPosting types should interact with the Blog type in numerous numbers. Each of them has a direct link to an article or a publication. Also, there are number properties that the blog posting type must contain:

• mainEntityOfPage- the canonical URL
• headline
• url -the page URL
• image (ImageObject)
• dateCreated
• dateModified
• datePublished
• logo
• author
• publisher

Structured Data Markup Testing

You can use the following tools to check if your pages are marked up correctly and you’re eligible for rich results:

• Rich Results Test

Google Structured Data & Rich Result Testing Tool

The structured data testing tool allows you to test URLs or code snippets:

Note that if the Structured Data Testing Tool detects an error, you must fix it as it might (and probably will) hurt your rankings. Warnings, on the other hand, are not something you should lose sleep over - usually, warnings refer to recommended properties you could include in your markup.

Rich Results Test

Rich Results Test is just as easy to use. All you have to do is paste your website's URL in the "Enter a URL to test" field → Click "Test URL".

Click on Test URL and wait for a few seconds

Note that you can also test code snippets.

Quick Recap

The addition to your Shopify store of structured data markups will help search engines understand better what your website is about. It will also increase your chances of getting rich results which, in turn, will increase user engagement and your CTR-all of which will lead to more sales.

The structured data markup you add to your Shopify store makes it easy for search engines to know what your website is all about. This is also a convenient way to fetch rich results, while it ensures that your website boosts engagement and your CTR does a good job in driving sales.

Data- vocabulary.org and schema.org are two types of structured data schemes. While the former is no longer in use for harnessing rich features with effect from April 6, 2022, the latter is effective. Hence, if you use data-vocabulary.org markup, use a schema.org markup to replace structured data.

There are hierarchically arranged properties and data types in schema.org markup or structured data markup. It is ideal to add structured data to your Shopify store elements such as homepage, collection pages, product pages, blog pages, and article pages. Let’s take a look at a brief overview of properties and data types your Shopify website should have for each page.

When it comes to adding structured data to your Shopify website, you can use them in two ways.

• Manual overhaul
• In-house assistance

If you seek support to implement structured data to your Shopify website or optimize SEO of your website, we are eager to help you.
Contact us here. Or you can also browse through our Rich Results Test here. This is a step, helping us ensure that structured data is correctly working for your Shopify webstore.

Your turn!

We are sure that we have shared with you a lot of information about structured data markup and resolved many of your queries. Well, if you still seek more information, we are happy to help you with your queries.

• Do you need help with implementing structured data?
• Do you do it manually?
• Do you like to outsource a Shopify expert?

Whatever it is, we’re here to help all the way!