JSON-LD for SEO Frequently Asked Questions

FAQs

I always welcome questions from my customers so I’d like to share some of the more common ones here.

I strongly believe it’s better to educate you on my products so you can make the decision that best suits you.

Q: What if it doesn’t install or I need help installing it?

JSON-LD for SEO’s automatic installer should work on every store but if there’s a problem installing, I’m happy to help and attempt a manual install.

I’ve only had two customers ever who had problems installing it and one of them was running a very custom theme that went far outside the Shopify site guidelines. Even so, it took me about five minutes to manually install it for him.

Q: What kind of results can I expect and how soon will they show up?

After installing I’ll show you how to use the official Google tools to test your structured data so you can be confident it’s there.

Google itself can take awhile before they update the search results. Google’s gotten scammed in the past by shady SEO-types so they’re cautious when they add Rich Snippets for a store.

The unofficial timelines that I’ve heard about are that it can take 8-11 weeks before you start seeing any results in Google from Rich Snippets…

… but, with the optimizations done in JSON-LD for SEO some customers start to see Rich Snippets and results within the first week.

Many customers see the results within the first month or two.

Q: What do the Rich Snippets look like?

The type of Rich Snippets you get depends a lot of Google’s algorithm but the main ones I see feature the product price, availability, and reviews.

Here are some screenshots from actual customers’ stores.

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Q: How can I trust you, with SEO being full of false promises and scams?

That’s a great question that I wish more people would ask of anyone who sells anything related to SEO and marketing.

I’m a developer first and foremost.

I’ve learned advanced SEO as part getting traffic to my own business and to help customers, but I’m not an SEO consultant or play one on TV.

The SEO consultants I talk to and get advice from are 100% above-the-board (called white-hat in SEO jargon). They are people who have gotten the results by staying on the good side of Google and providing value to their website visitors.

Even then, I still double check their advice to make sure it’s safe.

But anyone can say this so, I’d recommend taking at a look at the reviews below. All of them are from actual paying customers, no one there has gotten a special deal or discount for providing a review (In fact, it’s against Shopify’s policies too).

Q: Does my store really need this?

I’ll be honest, almost every store who asked this question needed this app.

The structured data built-in to most themes is broken and is missing critical data. There’s also the risk of changes to your theme breaking your structured data and losing your Rich Snippets.

So unless you’ve already reviewed your structured data and compared it to Google’s guidelines, you’ll probably benefit from the app.

If you still want to check, I’m happy to run my Structured Data Audit on your store. Just use the contact link to the right to contact support and ask for the Structured Data Audit. It’s 100% free.

Q: What structured data does it include?

JSON-LD for SEO includes the data needed by Google for Rich Snippets and Google Merchant Center.

The key pieces include:

• Business data – Organization/LocalBusiness
• Product data – Product, Offers
• Product reviews – AggregateRating
• Site search – Website
• Blog posts – Article
• Recipe blog posts – Article/Recipe
• Videos – VideoObject

There are probably 100+ fields that are included automatically from your Shopify data and I’m always adding more and tweaking the ones used.

If you have a detailed question about which fields are included, feel free to contact me.

Q: What’s the Google Merchant Center integration? Can it help me with…?

Google Merchant Center is the system that connects ecommerce products to Google AdWords.

It’s a complex beast of a system that is frankly, quite fragile and suffers from complicated and confusing documentation.

But it’s absolutely the best way to run Google ads for your products.

JSON-LD for SEO has a minor integration with Google Merchant Center to help with automatic item updates. This system is the part that tells Google when product prices or availability changes so your ads can automatically change too.

While JSON-LD for SEO won’t replace the need for a data feed app (e.g. Shopify’s Google Shopping app, Google Sheets) it can help you if you’ve experienced problems getting Automatic Item Updates working.

Feel free to contact me and I can share my guide on integrating the whole system.

Q: How much does it cost?

The JSON-LD for SEO Plus+ plan is $299, one-time. It adds 6 months of personal monitoring of your Rich Snippet process to ensure you have the best chance possible to get Rich Snippets.

Q: Will I be charged every month or only once?

JSON-LD for SEO is a single, one-time charge.

Because it’s meant to replace the work needed by an experienced web developer, charging you a one-time fee makes the most sense.

That way you pay it once, just like if you hired someone for a several hours to do the same.

Q: Why do you cost more than [OTHER APP]?

Other apps might claim JSON-LD as one of their features but JSON-LD for SEO is exclusively focused on providing the very best structured data for your store.

I’ve worked one-on-one with at hundreds of different stores, both to help them understand how structured data and Google work together, as well as researching the best data to get actual results in Google (e.g. Rich Snippets). A lot of the structured data themes and apps provide is just ignored by Google.

This is important because one error in your structured data can mean you will lose or never get your Rich Snippets. I’ve seen many such errors in other apps, some errors have been around for six months at a time.

I would recommend thinking about how many sales you’d need to “make back” the cost.

1? 2? 3?

I wouldn’t be surprised to hear about JSON-LD for SEO paying back its investment within the first week or month.

So why does JSON-LD for SEO cost more than the competitors?

Because it’s a premium app that has been designed and optimized to get you results in Google, fast.

Q: What if I don’t see any results, can I have my money back?

With the JSON-LD for SEO, I’m unable to guarantee any results in Google so there is no money back guarantee. The vast majority of customers will get some results given enough time.

On average, it takes 34 days to see Rich Results start to appear. This is not a hard and fast rule, just the average I’ve seen. Some stores take upwards of six months to see results.

Q: Why can’t I do this myself or pay someone else to do it for me?

You could create the JSON-LD structured data by hand for your store.

I estimate if you’re an experienced web developer who knows JSON, Liquid, and HTML it would take you about 3-5 hours to learn enough about structured data to have a basic first version created. Maybe another 5-10 hours or so to reproduce all of the data and product review integrations that JSON-LD for SEO provides.

So if you’re experienced and have 8-15 hours of free time, you totally could do it all yourself.

Though you’ll also want to budget a few hours every month to update and maintain it too. And maybe an hour or so to keep up on the news from Google and the structured data organizations.

If you’d rather pay to have this taken care of and supported, it’s probably a better business decision to buy the app.

Q: Will it impact my store’s page speed and performance?

There will be no impact on your store’s page speed or performance.

There are two main causes of poor performance on Shopify:

• loading a lot of files like large images
• running a lot of JavaScript

The size of the data JSON-LD for SEO adds is so small, it’s probably smaller than your smallest logo. Right now it weighs in at 2.9KB for all of the code, of which only 20% or so will be used on any given page.

While JSON-LD for SEO uses JSON-LD which looks and sounds like JavaScript, it doesn’t run any code in your customer’s browser. That means there is 0 speed impact on your store and customers.

In fact, the code for the app runs on Shopify’s super fast servers so you don’t even notice it.

So unlike other apps that add a bunch of files or JavaScript code to your store slowing it down, JSON-LD for SEO will have no impact on performance at all.

Q: What happens if I need to change my theme later?

If you need to make minor changes to your theme, you can as long as you leave the single line of code for JSON-LD for SEO intact.

If you decide to publish a completely new theme, Shopify will tell JSON-LD for SEO about it and it will automatically re-run the code installer.

Either way, you have full freedom to edit and change your theme.

Q: I have a question that isn’t here.

If you have another question or concern about the app, feel free contact me at this email address. I’m around every weekday from 9am-5pm and would be happy to answer your question.