Empower Your Content With Linked Data

Using JSON-LD for better SEO and other benefits

Photo by Kenny Luo on Unsplash

What is JSON-LD?

JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is a highly-structured yet flexible data format that can be used to describe web pages, people, and all sorts of types of data available online.

One high-profile usage is Google’s ‘review snippets’ — small pieces of additional information appearing alongside normal search results. For example, if you search for “interstellar”, you should see something similar to this:

In addition to the standard title and description, this snippet includes details such as the director and the film’s aggregate rating, ultimately chosen from votes on IMDB’s website. If you delve into the source of the original IMDB page, you might be able to find a JSON structure that looks like the following (many details removed for this example; try searching for “@type” in the page source):

{
  "@context": "http://schema.org",
  "@type": "Movie",
  "director": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "url": "/name/nm0634240/",
    "name": "Christopher Nolan"
  },
  "aggregateRating": {
    "@type": "AggregateRating",
    "ratingCount": 1465630,
    "bestRating": "10.0",
    "worstRating": "1.0",
    "ratingValue": "8.6"
  }
}