Ranking impacts from structured data

Anyone using SEO as a marketing channel wants to protect their rankings. Recently a customer emailed asking about any risk or impact on rankings as part of JSON-LD for SEO’s structured data.

If I install your app, will it in any way negatively impact my organic ranking in Google? Is there a potential for it to?

In short, no. Structured data has no direct impact on your rankings.

JSON-LD for SEO and adding structured data in general is more about improving how your existing search results appear, without affecting rankings.

Many factors can contribute to your rankings in search results.

Ask yourself if any of these can be true:

1. Your page content has changed
2. Your page meta description and meta title have changed
3. Other websites have linked to your store or removed links to your store
4. Your competitors have done any of the above to their sites, making them a better or worse website than yours
5. Google has done an algorithm update

Both content (#1) and meta content (#2) are in your control. They are built into Shopify and most themes. I have an article about those (and other) parts of Shopify SEO.

Backlinks (#3) and your competitor sites (#4) are not usually within your control but you can do some analysis to find out who and what’s changed. That’s beyond my knowledge and something I ask a friend about. Think backlink analysis, keyword research, and the like.

You can always count on two things: taxes and Google updates. Google's updates (#5) are also uncontrollable and inevitable. When Google makes an algorithm update, there’s nothing you can do about it other than adapt to the new changes.

Google isn't looking at just one or two areas to decide where you rank in search results. Key Search signals may include but are not limited to:

• Meaning - the intent behind the query
• Relevance - the same keywords (to oversimplify this one)
• Quality - demonstrates expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness
• Usability - when all else is equal, the accessibility of the content
• Context - personalization

Google is also personalizing search results now. So the concept of a “#1 rank” is muddier than a few years ago.

How you see your store ranked is going to be different than how I would. We can also assume our unique results will be different a week from now because results are always changing.

When you’re ready to move beyond SEO rankings and start to attract valuable customers who want your products, look into Google’s Rich Results. The best way to get them on Shopify is with JSON-LD for SEO. We'll automatically add relevant Shopify structured data to your store when you install and enable the app.

While only Google has control over the search results and Rich Results, the better quality data you can give Google, the better chances you have of getting traffic from them.