Mild-mannered designer by day…
I don’t actually think I’m a superhero. I mean, many people have this notion that superheroes have genetic mutations and have superpowers. Neither of which I have. Unless you count being a triplet as a genetic mutation 😉
Why you shouldn't rely on your Shopify theme's microdata
A question that comes up frequently when I’m talking about my app JSON-LD for SEO is,
Why can’t I just use the structured data that comes with my theme?
You can use your theme’s microdata but you’re risking a lot.
The number one support question I get is “why does Google Search Console say there are errors?” and the answer 95% of the time is that the theme is coded wrong or is missing data.
I look at structured data behind a lot of different themes and I can count on one hand the number of themes who have the data formatted correctly. Near half were custom themes.
We’re talking about hundreds of stores.
Structured data has a very strict format it has to follow so when a theme doesn’t follow that format, it’s flagged as invalid.
Depending on how bad the data is, Google might ignore that field or ignore your structured data for that page entirely.
This means that for many of the Shopify themes out in the wild, their structured data is effectively worthless.
That’s why I recommend JSON-LD for SEO to almost every Shopify store.
Google Search will use the higher-quality set of data from JSON-LD for SEO and ignore all of the structured data from your theme.
Search Console has a history of raising issues that don’t actually impact Google Search. I wish the Search Console report would recognize when you have good data and ignore the other data automatically, but it doesn’t.
Most of the time adding JSON-LD for SEO is a nice, quick win for the store.
JSON-LD for SEO
Get more organic search traffic from Google without having to fight for better rankings by utilizing search enhancements called Rich Results.
Linking Llama
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