Structured data: how to help AI understand your business

Short answer: structured data is a block of code, invisible to users, that describes your company unambiguously: name, activity, address, contact details, official profiles and products. It makes it easier for search engines and AI systems to identify who you are and not confuse you with another company.

What schema.org is

It's a shared vocabulary, created by the major search engines, for describing entities on the web. It's usually added in JSON-LD format, as a <script type="application/ld+json"> block in the page's HTML.

There's no guarantee that an AI assistant will use it to recommend you. What it does do is remove ambiguity, and that helps any system that needs to understand your website.

The types that help a business most

Organization: name, logo, website and, very importantly, sameAs with your official profiles (LinkedIn, Google Business Profile, industry directories). It connects your brand with what's said about it elsewhere.
LocalBusiness (or a subtype such as Dentist or LegalService): if you serve customers at a physical location. Include your address, opening hours and service area.
Service or Product: what you sell, with a description and, if you like, a price.
FAQPage: real frequently asked questions with their answers.
Article: for your blog posts, with author and date.

A minimal example

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "name": "Your Company",
  "url": "https://yourcompany.com",
  "logo": "https://yourcompany.com/logo.png",
  "description": "What you do, who for and where, in one sentence.",
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.linkedin.com/company/your-company",
    "https://maps.google.com/?cid=YOUR_ID"
  ]
}

Best practices

Make it match what's visible. Structured data should describe the visible content of the page, not add things that aren't there.
Be consistent everywhere. Use the same name, address and phone number on your website, Google Business Profile and directories.
Validate it. Use the schema.org validator or Google's Rich Results Test.
Don't use it to inflate. Marking up reviews that don't exist or false information goes against search engine guidelines and can lead to penalties.

Next step

The Visaeon free check reviews which structured data your website has and gives you ready-to-use code to add whatever is missing. Try it for free.