Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Need a layman's definition/analogy of the difference between schema and structured data

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Need a layman's definition/analogy of the difference between schema and structured data

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    5
    1309
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • RosemaryB
      RosemaryB last edited by

      I'm currently writing a blog post about schema.  However I want to set the record straight that schema is not exactly the same as structured data, although both are often used interchangeably.  I understand this schema.org is a vocabulary of global identifiers for properties and things.   Structured data is what Google officially stated as "a standard way to annotate your content so machines can understand it..."

      Does anybody know of a good analogy to compare the two?

      Thanks!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • BeanstalkIM
        BeanstalkIM last edited by

        Hi Rosemary, Dave here. 🙂

        I like to think of it like our addressing system.  Because we all use the same system and format for our addresses on an envelope we don't need a code to tell us but as you know ... everyone displays their product information and other data differently on a page. Because of that the engines can have difficulty telling what bit of data is what.  Is "blue" the color of the product, the color of the screen or simply used on the page in a "Don't feel blue ... buy XYZ !"

        Structured data, as Matt well-noted, is just an idea really of matching information with what it means.  Like saying "blue" = "product color".

        Of course, that's all well-and-good but we can all build our own systems and many have been.  If we're all using different systems then nothing makes sense so folks got together and created Schema.org simply as a body that could help create a standard.  Like saying, "on an envelop you put the name first, then the address, then the city, then the state, then the zip code".  If we put things on the envelop differently things would get messy so Schema basically gives us the instruction on how to pass information across.  Schema isn't the idea or even the data, it's the instructions on how to tell Google what specific data means.

        Clear as mud? 😉

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • MattRoney
          MattRoney last edited by

          Well, let's see. 🙂 Structured data in this sense comes down to a method of labelling elements of your site in order to clarify what they are for search engine crawlers, microdata is a form of structured data that works in HTML5, and Schema is a standard for microdata. So Schema is microdata is structured data. All Schema (in this use) is structured data, but not all structured data is Schema.

          Maybe something like, if structured data represents all the team sports in the world, and microdata represents every game intended to be played on a football pitch, then Schema may be the Laws of the Game—the standard rules for international soccer.

          Also, go Seattle Sounders! 😉

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • RosemaryB
            RosemaryB @MattRoney last edited by

            Yes, thank you.  However I'm looking for a simple layman's analogy.  Most of the blog post readers are not going to be able to comprehend the technical aspects.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • MattRoney
              MattRoney last edited by

              Hi Rosemary! There's actually a pretty decent explanation here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/schema-structured-data

              Structured data is a system of pairing a name with a value that helps search engines categorize and index your content. Microdata is one form of structured data that works with HTML5. Schema.org is a project that provides a particular set of agreed-upon definitions for microdata tags.

              Does that make sense? 🙂

              RosemaryB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              Browse Questions

              Explore more categories

              • Moz Tools

                Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

              • SEO Tactics

                Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

              • Community

                Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

              • Digital Marketing

                Chat about tactics outside of SEO

              • Research & Trends

                Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

              • Support

                Connect on product support and feature requests.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • Ty1986

                Structured data: Product vs auto rental schema?

                Hi mozzers, If you are rental company, is it useful to add both the product and auto rental schemas or auto rental schema on its own should just be enough? Finally, on the auto rental schema, you have to add an address. Could we just add a city instead of an entire address and avoid receiving a warning message on the strutured data testing tool? Thank you.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ty1986
                0
              • fablau

                What's the best way to noindex pages but still keep backlinks equity?

                Hello everyone, Maybe it is a stupid question, but I ask to the experts... What's the best way to noindex pages but still keep backlinks equity from those noindexed pages? For example, let's say I have many pages that look similar to a "main" page which I solely want to appear on Google, so I want to noindex all pages with the exception of that "main" page... but, what if I also want to transfer any possible link equity present on the noindexed pages to the main page? The only solution I have thought is to add a canonical tag pointing to the main page on those noindexed pages... but will that work or cause wreak havoc in some way?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau
                3
              • Aikijeff

                What are Soft 404's and are they a problem

                Hi, I have some old pages that were coming up in google WMT as a 404.  These had links into them so i thought i'd do a 301 back to either the home page or to a relevant category or page. However these are now listed in WMT as soft 404's. I'm not sure what this means and whether google is saying it doesn't like this? Any advice welcomed.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Aikijeff
                0
              • nicole.healthline

                Bing flags multiple H1's as an issue of high importance--any case studies?

                Going through Bing's SEO Analyzer and found that Bing thinks having multiple H1's on a page is an issue. It's going to be quite a bit of work to remove the H1 tags from various pages. Do you think this is a major issue or not? Does anyone know of any case studies / interviews to show that fixing this will lead to improvement?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline
                0
              • PottyScotty

                Creating 100,000's of pages, good or bad idea

                Hi Folks, Over the last 10 months we have focused on quality pages but have been frustrated with competition websites out ranking us because they have bigger sites.  Should we focus on the long tail again? One option for us is to take every town across the UK and create pages using our activities.  e.g. Stirling
                Stirling paintball
                Stirling Go Karting
                Stirling Clay shooting We are not going to link to these pages directly from our main menus but from the site map. These pages would then show activities that were in a 50 mile radius of the towns.  At the moment we have have focused our efforts on Regions, e.g. Paintball Scotland, Paintball Yorkshire focusing all the internal link juice to these regional pages, but we don't rank high for towns that the activity sites are close to. With 45,000 towns and 250 activities we could create over a million pages which seems very excessive!  Would creating 500,000 of these types of pages damage our site? This is my main worry, or would it make our site rank even higher for the tougher keywords and also get lots of traffic from the long tail like we used to get. Is there a limit to how big a site should be? edit

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PottyScotty
                0
              • RichBestSEO

                Is there any negative SEO effect of having comma's in URL's?

                Hello, I have a client who has a large ecommerce website. Some category names have been created with comma's in - which has meant that their software has automatically generated URL's with comma's in for every page that comes beneath the category in the site hierarchy. eg. 1 : http://shop.deliaonline.com/store/music,-dvd-and-games/dvds-and-blu_rays/ eg. 2 : http://shop.deliaonline.com/store/music,-dvd-and-games/dvds-and-blu_rays/action-and-adventure/ etc... I know that URL's with comma's in look a bit ugly! But is there 'any' SEO reason why URL's with comma's in are any less effective? Kind Regs, RB

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichBestSEO
                0
              • MTalhaImtiaz

                How to check a website's architecture?

                Hello everyone, I am an SEO analyst - a good one - but I am weak in technical aspects. I do not know any programming and only a little HTML. I know this is a major weakness for an SEO so my first request to you all is to guide me how to learn HTML and some basic PHP programming. Secondly... about the topic of this particular question - I know that a website should have a flat architecture... but I do not know how to find out if a website's architecture is flat or not, good or bad. Please help me out on this... I would be obliged. Eagerly awaiting your responses, BEst Regards, Talha

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MTalhaImtiaz
                0
              • petrakraft

                What's your best hidden SEO secret?

                Don't take that question too serious but all answers are welcome 😉 Answer to all:
                "Gentlemen, I see you did you best - at least I hope so! But after all I suppose I am stuck here to go on reading the SEOmoz blog if I can't sqeeze more secrets from you!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | petrakraft
                9

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.