Structured data helps search engines, such as Google, to better understand the information on your healthcare website.
Search engines use this information to determine how your website’s content is indexed in its search results. Structured markup also makes your content eligible for enhanced presentation of search results. In the near future, Google expects rich snippets and structured markup to play more important roll and impact its search algorithm and how your site ranks organically.
While the timing of this update hasn’t been released, it makes sense for those websites not using rich snippets and structured markup to proactively categorize their data. Failure to do so could negatively impact your search results in the future.
Examples of rich snippets and structured markup in use
If you’ve ever done a search for reviews of a practice or a provider and you see a star rating pop up in your search results, you’ve seen rich snippets in action.
Another example typically needed in the health industry is the promotion of your medical office location(s).
Other structured markup for healthcare
Currently, structured markup can be used with the following types of information:
- Physicians
- Therapists
- Locations
- Specialties
- Procedures
- Medical Specialty
- Medical Conditions
- Medical Scholarly Articles
- Medical Studies
- Events
- Reviews
Depending on what you are trying to optimize for, there is markup that can be leveraged.