Structured data is a block of code, usually JSON-LD, that tells search engines plainly what a page is about: this is an organisation, this is a software product with these prices, this article was written by this person on this date.
It does not make a page rank by itself. It makes the page easier to understand and can make it eligible for richer results.
Short on time? Comppound does this work for SaaS companies. AI-native, and a person reviews every page.
Have us do itThe types a SaaS site needs
A small set covers most of a SaaS marketing site.
- Organization on the homepage: name, logo, URL and profiles elsewhere through sameAs
- SoftwareApplication on the product or pricing page: category, operating system and offers
- Article or BlogPosting on guides, with author and dates
- BreadcrumbList on any page deeper than the top level
- FAQPage only where the page has a real visible FAQ
Rules that keep it safe
Structured data must describe what is visible on the page. Marking up reviews you do not show, or prices that differ from the page, breaks Google's guidelines and can lead to a manual action. Validate every template with the Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator before release.
Comppound can do this for you
Want to be named in AI answers?
Comppound checks what ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI features say about your category, opens your site to their crawlers and builds the pages and mentions they cite. AI-native, with every page reviewed by a person.
- AI visibility baseline for your buyer questions
- Crawler access and quotable pages
- Monthly tracking of where you are named
What it does for AI answers
There is no public statement that assistants rank sources by their schema. What structured data does do is remove ambiguity about entities: that Tallyroom is a software product, made by this company, in this category. That consistency, across your site and profiles elsewhere, helps systems connect mentions to the right thing.
Worked example · an illustration, not a client result
Tallyroom's pricing page markup
Tallyroom added SoftwareApplication markup to its pricing page with one Offer per plan, using exactly the prices shown on the page, and generated it from the same data as the visible table so the two cannot drift apart.
Do it yourself
Mark up four templates
- 1Add Organization markup with sameAs links to your homepage.
- 2Add SoftwareApplication with offers to pricing, generated from the same data as the page.
- 3Add Article markup with author and dates to your guide template.
- 4Add BreadcrumbList to deeper templates.
- 5Validate each template and fix every error before release.
Free tool for this: AI crawler access checker
Common mistakes
Marking up what is not on the page
Hidden reviews, invented ratings or stale prices in markup break the guidelines.
Hand-written JSON that drifts
Generate markup from the same data as the page so a price change updates both.
Expecting a ranking boost
Structured data helps understanding and eligibility for rich results. It does not raise a weak page.
Rather not do it yourself?
Want to be named in AI answers?
Comppound checks what ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI features say about your category, opens your site to their crawlers and builds the pages and mentions they cite. AI-native, with every page reviewed by a person.
- AI visibility baseline for your buyer questions
- Crawler access and quotable pages
- Monthly tracking of where you are named
Questions
JSON-LD. It is what Google recommends and it is easiest to generate and maintain.
Google does not show review stars for self-serving reviews of your own business, so it is rarely worth adding.
Key terms
- Structured DataStructured data is machine-readable markup, usually JSON-LD using schema.org types, that describes what a page is about to search engines.
- JSON-LDJSON-LD is a JSON-based format for structured data, placed in a script tag, and it is the format Google recommends for Schema.org markup.
- Schema.orgSchema.org is the shared vocabulary of types and properties that search engines use to read structured data about pages, products, people and organizations.
- SoftwareApplication SchemaSoftwareApplication schema describes an app with name, category, operating system, price and ratings, and can make it eligible for a software app rich result.
- Organization SchemaOrganization schema describes a company in structured data: name, logo, URL, contact details and official profiles, usually placed on the homepage.
- sameAssameAs is a Schema.org property listing URLs of other pages that unambiguously identify the same entity, such as official social and reference profiles.
- Rich Results TestGoogle's Rich Results Test checks a URL or code snippet and reports which Google rich result types the page's structured data makes it eligible for.
- Self-Serving Reviews RuleGoogle's self-serving reviews rule stops review stars from showing for LocalBusiness and Organization markup when a business hosts reviews about itself.
