Someone sees a result with star ratings or an expandable FAQ and asks, “can we look like that?” What produces those is structured data: a machine-readable description sitting alongside the sentences humans read.
Set expectations correctly first. Adding structured data does not raise your ranking. What it creates is eligibility to be displayed more richly — and eligibility is not a promise. It is still worth doing, because when the richer display appears, that result is noticeably harder to scroll past.
Choosing the type is nearly the whole job
There is a defined vocabulary of types, and each expects different information. So the real work is picking the type that matches what you actually are.
The second-to-last line is the common misstep. Most eye-catching rich results happen to be products, so service businesses reach for Product markup. But Product expects price, availability and reviews. A one-off technical engagement has none of those, so what arrives is not a rich result but a list of warnings in Search Console. Service is the type that fits a service.
Do not describe what is not on the page
The second rule is simpler. Structured data must describe what the page genuinely contains. Declaring ratings that appear nowhere, questions that are not shown, or a price you do not actually charge is a policy breach, and being caught costs you the eligibility entirely.
Which fixes the order of work: make it real on the page first, then describe it. If you want FAQ markup, the page needs a genuine FAQ before anything else.
What this looks like in WordPress
An SEO plugin emits sensible defaults for posts, pages and business details, so the marketer’s job is not writing code but checking what type is going out and adjusting it.
The usual accident is the same entity declared twice: theme and plugin each publishing company details, so one page announces the same organisation two ways. Run two SEO plugins and it happens on a much larger scale — the one-plugin rule from earlier applies here too.
To verify, paste the URL into a structured data testing tool or read the enhancements report in Search Console. An error usually means a required field for that type is empty, which is frequently a sign that the type itself is wrong.
Type selection and real markup examples continue in the SEO archive, and tidying a site’s structured data is included in our optimization program.
Next part
The next part steps away from search and into speed. Core Web Vitals, translated into plain marketing language, comes down to three sentences.