Question
I have received some great feedback on my last post, Harsh Agrawal commented on the post asking for a recommendation for a plugin for adding structured data. There are tons of plugins available but I really wish there was a perfect plugin that I swear upon, but it’s a little complicated than that, so I decided to make a blog post out of it.
I have gone through all the available Structured data plugins, some of them used to work, some of them kinda work and some of them…. well, they are premium, so I haven’t got a chance to get my hands on it. I have spent a few hours trying pick and test some of the plugins that I liked the most and decided to write my opinion on them.
1. WP SEO Structured Data Schema by Phil Singleton
I have also mentioned this plugin in one of my earlier posts as well, this seems to be the one that is very easy to use and understand for a non-technical end user.
There are two main sections of this plugin:
After you activate the plugin, go to the options page of the plugin by clicking on the WP SEO Schema menu from the left sidebar in WP-admin. If you are a local business, then select ‘LocalBusiness’ otherwise select Organization from the dropdown and fill out all the fields on that page. That’s was the first part.
After you fill out all the details, you will be able to add the below schema types from your post editor screen.
- Article
- Blog Posting
- News Article
- Event
- Product
- Video
- Service
- Review
- Aggregate Ratings
Once you hit publish, the plugin will automatically convert the data into JSON-LD format and add it to the appropriate position on the website for Google. It will not display any details in the frontend, so don’t be get confused if you don’t see any output in the post preview.
You might be also interested in a tutorial on adding Structured Data for Local Business using this plugin.
2. Schema by Hesham Zebida
This one simply named, Schema, has been released very recently. It looks promising, works out of the box and it will probably be popular in the future. However, I think the user experience is a little bit confusing and since there is no output in the front-end, the user can feel lost. There are ‘Settings’ which are fine, but then the Types, which I have felt was confusing for me as well. It can be frustrating for the non-technical users who might be sitting at their desk, being clueless about whether the integration works or not.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that there is a learning curve for non-technical users. Other than that, I think it is a well-made plugin and does what it says.
And then there are…
All In One Schema.org Rich Snippets
This plugin seems like the most popular schema plugin with 40,000+ active users, however, I have noticed some incompatibility while testing.
Schema App Structured Data by vberkel
You can also use this plugin for adding structured data. However, it will require you to register for an account on their own web app and then connect it to your website. I am not sure if that’s the best way to go.
Schema Creator by Raven
You may have come across this one with 20k active users and it is also quite popular but I should say that it does not work anymore. Plus, it outputs the fields directly on the front end of the post, which is not the ideal use case for the majority of the users.
Conclusion
The first thing that I would say while concluding this post is that don’t believe the user ratings / reviews of these plugins. Most of the times, the user has no idea about the technical aspects of validating the structured data and that it takes around few days to a week to completely validate the structured data and display it in the Search console of Webmaster tools.
If you are looking to add Structured data then you must check the above two plugins mentioned.
Helpful Links:
- How to add Structured Data for Local Business
- Fully Utilize Structured Data To Enhance Your Business
- Structured Data for E-commerce and its effects on SEO
Over to you!
The post cannot be finished without your opinions! How do you include structured data to your website? If you are using a plugin, which plugin is that?
Please let me know your comments in the comment section below. If you have any questions around Structured data or any other subject, then please feel free to ask or you can directly ask questions by emailing me on ahmed@ahmedkaludi.com.
I’m surprised you didn’t include the WPSSO Schema JSON-LD Markup plugin. 😉
Hey JS Morisset,
I was really not aware of this plugin, Looks good!. I will go through it and update the post 🙂
Thanks for the heads up.
Regards,
Ahmed
Thanks for your research Ahmed. I had a word with Hesham about Schema plugin & it’s still going to take time time to be fully functional. Undoubtedly it’s one of the best.. I’m looking for something that is reliable & works along with Yoast SEO!
Hey Harsh,
Sorry for the delay in responding, it has been such a busy week [something new & exciting is cooking 😉 ]
Yep, the plugin looks great.
I will thoroughly check the existing plugins with Yoast SEO and update the results here. It will help a lot of people, because I have been getting this question by email as well.
Regards,
Ahmed
Thanks for this post! There should be more structured data be available on websites. I just went with “Schema” (next to Yoast, my current theme that has some schema.org markup, and some custom code). I’ll see how it goes.
The Schema plugin has a nifty “Structured Data Testing Tool” icon on the admin bar in WordPress. When viewing a post you can verify the structured data through its link to
https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool?[url-to-your-post]
Hey Jan,
Do let us know about the results here of using Schema plugin with Yoast.
Regards,
Ahmed
I was looking for a good plug in to include schema on my site.
I liked the way you presented your knowledge.
Thank you so much.
I am going to try the 1st one.hope all goes good.
I am starting a new tech review website basically android focused. The problem is that my theme is already schema optimized. But when I will publish a review it will be an another structured data. So, my question it.. will this create schema error. Because I have a blogpost along with review.
Please provide you feedback.