What is microdata?
Microdata is a way to mark up your HTML so search engines don’t have to guess what your content means. It’s old-school structured data, part of the semantic web thing, but still useful if you’re embedding meaning directly into elements. You use itemscope, itemtype, and itemprop.
You’re just telling machines: “This div isn’t just some random text. It’s a product. With a name. And a price.” That matters for SEO, making your chances of ranking on certain keywords higher.
Here’s what it looks like:
<div itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/Product”>
<span itemprop=”name”>Noise Cancelling Headphones</span>
<span itemprop=”price”>$129.00</span>
</div>
Now Google knows what it’s looking at. You might get a rich snippet. Not always, but it increases the odds. (Source)
Why should I use microdata?
Because Google, Bing, and others do use structured data. It improves how your stuff shows up in search. You’re not gaming rankings, you’re helping crawlers understand your content.
Without it, they just crawl your page and try to infer things. Sometimes they get it right. Sometimes not. Microdata makes it clear.
Use it if you publish:
- Products
- Events
- Recipes
- Articles
- Job listings
- Local business info
Use microdata for higher rankings
If you run a site with that kind of content and don’t use microdata (or JSON-LD, which is more common now), you’re leaving value on the table. Your content might still rank. But it won’t look as good in the results. That matters. Rich snippets drive clicks. So you should probably start implementing schema on your page. Schemawriter.ai helps you write high quality JSON-LD schema in only a few minutes. It is something you should always have on your website!
Common microdata mistakes
- Missing required properties. You use itemtype, but forget to add all the itemprop fields that Schema.org expects. So Google ignores it.
- Wrong vocabulary. You say it’s a “Product” but then use properties that don’t belong under that type.
- Inconsistent markup. Some pages have it and others don’t. Or worse: you mix Microdata with JSON-LD and they contradict each other.
- No validation. You never run it through Googles Rich Results Test, so you don’t even know it’s broken.