Search Engine Optimisation
Schema Markup & Structured Data
Structured data is one of the few areas where doing it wrong is worse than not doing it. Marking up content that is not on the page earns a manual action.
Schema markup describes your content to search engines in a format they parse directly. The Nexclick implements it at template level, validates every type against the Rich Results Test, and marks up only what is genuinely visible on the page — which is where most implementations go wrong.
Is this you?
What usually prompts the call
- Search Console reports structured data errors and nobody has read them.
- A plugin injects schema you have never inspected and cannot switch off selectively.
- Competitors show star ratings and prices in the results and you do not.
- You added FAQ schema years ago and it stopped producing rich results without anyone noticing.
What we do
The actual deliverables
Things that appear on an invoice, not adjectives.
- Template-level audit
- What is currently emitted on each template, where it comes from, and whether it validates. Plugin-injected schema frequently conflicts with theme-injected schema on the same page.
- Eligibility assessment before implementation
- Google has repeatedly narrowed which types produce visible rich results. We will tell you where a type is no longer worth implementing rather than billing for it anyway.
- Implementation in a typed graph
- A single JSON-LD graph per page with entities cross-referenced by @id, rather than four disconnected blocks repeating the organisation on every template.
- Visibility matching
- Every marked-up property confirmed as visible on the page. Marking up reviews, prices or FAQs that are not rendered is a policy breach and a manual action risk.
- Validation across every template
- Rich Results Test and Schema.org validator on each template, not on one sample page. Errors cluster in templates rather than in individual URLs.
- Entity consistency
- Organisation, address, phone and social profiles identical between schema, the visible page, your Google Business Profile and Companies House.
- Monitoring after deployment
- Search Console enhancement reports watched for a month, because errors appear as pages are recrawled rather than immediately.
Comparison
Which schema types still earn anything
Rich result eligibility has changed substantially and most guidance online predates those changes. This is our current working assessment, so you can judge whether a proposed implementation is worth paying for.
| Type | Visible rich result? | Still worth implementing? |
|---|---|---|
| Product / Offer | Yes — price, availability, ratings | Yes, essential for ecommerce |
| LocalBusiness | Indirectly, via knowledge panel | Yes, for any business with premises |
| Organization | Knowledge panel and entity resolution | Yes, on every site |
| BreadcrumbList | Yes — breadcrumb trail in results | Yes, cheap and reliable |
| Article / BlogPosting | Yes — Top Stories, Discover eligibility | Yes, for publishers and blogs |
| Review / AggregateRating | Yes, where genuine and first-party | Only with real, on-page, first-party reviews |
| FAQPage | Largely withdrawn since 2023 | For structure and AI extraction, not rich results |
| HowTo | Withdrawn on desktop and mobile | No, for rich results. Structure it well regardless. |
| Event | Yes — event listings | Yes, if you run events |
| JobPosting | Yes — Google Jobs | Yes, if you recruit |
| Recipe | Yes | Yes, if applicable |
| VideoObject | Yes — video results | Yes, if you host video |
| Person | Knowledge panel, author attribution | Yes, for real named authors |
| SoftwareApplication | Sometimes | Yes, for SaaS |
How it works
Step by step, with timeframes
Timeframes are typical rather than guaranteed, and they assume we get account access and approvals when we ask.
- 01Week 1
Audit
Every template inspected for existing markup, conflicts and validation errors. Conflicting sources are the most common finding.
- 02Week 1–2
Decide what is worth implementing
Against current rich result eligibility and your actual page content, rather than against a list of every available type.
- 03Week 2–4
Implement and validate
Built at template level, validated on staging before release. Zero errors is the acceptance criterion, not "mostly clean".
- 04Week 4–8
Monitor
Search Console enhancement reports as pages are recrawled, with anything surfacing corrected within the engagement.
What you get
Reporting and ownership
- A template-by-template map of what markup exists, what is added and what is removed.
- Validation evidence for every template, with zero errors as the acceptance criterion.
- An honest list of types not implemented because they no longer earn rich results.
- Search Console enhancement monitoring for the first month after deployment.
- Documentation so your developers can extend it correctly as new templates are built.
Tools and platforms
- Google Rich Results Test
- Schema.org validator
- Google Search Console (enhancement reports)
- Screaming Frog (structured data extraction)
- Chrome DevTools
Timeline
How long this actually takes
Audit takes a week, implementation two to three. Rich results appear as pages are recrawled — days for high-traffic pages, weeks for the long tail. Two honest caveats. Valid schema makes you eligible for a rich result; it does not guarantee one, and Google decides per query. And rich result eligibility has narrowed repeatedly — FAQ and HowTo results were substantially restricted in 2023, and anyone still selling FAQ schema as a route to visible rich results for a commercial site is working from outdated information. The durable value now is entity clarity and machine readability, including for AI answer engines.
Pricing model
Fixed-price project
Fixed price by template count. Ongoing validation as new templates are built sits within a technical SEO retainer.
Questions
Schema Markup & Structured Data questions
Will schema markup improve our rankings?
Not directly. Schema is not a ranking factor. It makes you eligible for rich results, which improve click-through, and it helps search engines and AI systems understand your content and your entity. Those are real benefits. Anyone selling it as a ranking lever is misrepresenting what it does.
We have valid schema and no rich results. Why?
Validity creates eligibility, not entitlement. Google decides whether to show a rich result per query, weighing page quality, competition and query type. Persistent absence usually indicates a quality or trust issue with the page rather than a markup problem.
Can we mark up reviews we collected on Google?
No. Google explicitly disallows marking up reviews sourced from third-party platforms as your own AggregateRating. The reviews must be first-party, genuine, and displayed on the page carrying the markup. This is one of the most commonly breached rules and it does draw manual actions.
Is a schema plugin good enough?
For a simple site, often yes. Problems arise when a plugin and a theme both emit markup, producing conflicts, or when a plugin marks up content that is not visible. We usually keep the plugin where it works and correct what it emits, rather than replacing it on principle.
What happens if our schema is wrong?
Invalid markup is generally ignored, which costs you the opportunity and nothing else. Markup describing content that is not on the page is different — that is a policy breach and it can produce a manual action removing all rich results across the site. The second kind is the one to worry about.
Does structured data help with AI search?
It helps with entity resolution and machine readability, which appears to matter for how AI systems identify and attribute a business. It is not sufficient on its own — extractable page structure and original content matter more — but it is cheap, and it is one of the reasons we still implement types whose rich results have been withdrawn.
Last reviewed 28 July 2026.
Tell us what you are trying to fix
A 20-minute call, no pitch deck. The Nexclick will tell you what we would do, roughly what it costs, and whether we are the right people for it.