Want to reduce disastrous mistakes when building webpages with structured data?
Take a spin through these structured data testing tools, which aim to help you debug your code and get the most from the organized data you’re using to build your webpages — while keeping SEO, or search engine optimization, in mind.
9 Structured Data Testing Tools
- Google Rich Results Test
- Google Search Console Structured Data Report
- Merkle Schema Markup Generator
- Microsoft Bing Markup Validator
- Schema.org
- SEO Site Checkup Structured Data Test
- Structured Data Linter
- USON-LD Playground
- Yandex Webmaster Structured Data Validator
What Do Structured Data Testing Tools Do, Exactly?
Structured data testing tools are software tools designed to flag errors in organized data that’s been arranged in repositories, like databases, and provide insight on how to resolve issues, as well as tweak the data to get the best performance out of it.
The benefit of structured data, versus semi-structured or unstructured data, is that it’s easier to manipulate and query since it’s organized or structured for a specific system or purpose. Often that purpose is to communicate information about a webpage, such as a logo, contact information, rich snippets that contain additional information about website content on search page results, or other information that may come up in search results.
What Do Structured Data Testing Tools Do?
Structured data testing tools are especially useful when it comes to creating data, such as metadata, to create website page information discoverable by search engines.
These tools, for example, can validate metadata formats supported by Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines, according to a Software Testing Help blog post. Structured data testing tools can also detect your permalink, or URL, setup and show information to search engines based on the structured data, while other structured data testing tools can identify taxonomies and custom post types merely by evaluating their code.
There are a number of structured data testing tools to help you with your coding efforts and reduce your frustration levels.
9 Structured Data Testing Tools to Know
With this narrowed list of structured data testing tools, the next best step to take is to give each one a try to identify the right tool for you.
Google Rich Results Test
Looking to optimize your website for Google search results? This structured data testing tool, Google Rich Results Test, will focus on your desktop and mobile webpages to ensure they are optimized for the special features on Google’s search engine results page, or SERP, which returns search results after keywords are entered into the search box. The information returned can include featured snippets, video carousels and image packs.
Google Search Console Structured Data Report
The Google Search Console allows you to peer into the number of structured data components on your website, providing you the ability to address a number of problems simultaneously versus one at a time, according to data platform company Hevo.
JSON-LD Playground
This tool helps determine whether your structured data syntax fulfills Javascript Object Notation (JSON) standards. JSON-LD, which is a fairly new structured data format, helps convert structured data that’s linked to a form that can be easily shared or stored and returned to its original structure when recovered.
Merkle Schema Markup Generator
Want to generate accurate structured data for your website and specific webpages? That’s the aim of the Merkle Schema Markup Generator, which helps you generate accurate code for items like articles, FAQ or event pages, making them SERP ready, according to a HubSpot blog post.
Microsoft Bing Markup Validator
This structured data testing tool, which is part of Bing Webmaster Tools URL inspection tool, is especially useful when perfecting your site for Microsoft’s Bing. With this tool, you’ll not only find markup errors in your structured data but also receive suggestions on how to improve the data’s organization.
Schema.org
The Schema.org testing tool checks the rules defining the way your structured data is put together to ensure it meets all possible schema markup requirements. Schema markup is the code that describes the components of your website in a language that major search engines can understand.
SEO Site Checkup Structured Data Test
SEO Site Checkup dishes out a comprehensive testing tool that analyzes your structured data to verify it meets HTML microdata extension specifications and suggests a priority for fixing the data errors and provides guide links to help fix them. Microdata lends a hand in creating rich snippets in search results.
Structured Data Linter
Use this Linter tool to verify structured data in HTML pages, such as those found in microdata, JSON-LD and Resource Description Framework (RDF) formats, according to marketing product and services company Rock Content’ blog post. RDF is used as a standard web model for interchanging data.
Yandex Webmaster Structured Data Validator
The Yandex structured data testing tool is designed to ensure search engines correctly identify your webpage metadata. This tool, which requires signing up, also provides error and warning alerts, as well as guidance to fix them.
Why Structured Data Testing Tools Are Important
Structured data testing tools are a key component of an SEO strategy.
One error in your structured data, such as missing or wrong code in your markup, can prevent search engines from finding your information and displaying it in its results.
That, in turn, could potentially cost your company lost customers. Structured data can contain such information about your company’s product pricing and features, or perhaps, its customer ratings, but errors in your structured data may prevent that information from surfacing when a potential customer does a search.