What is JSON-LD and why is it preferred?

JSON-LD is a block of JSON inside a script tag describing what a page is about. Google recommends it over Microdata and RDFa because it sits apart from the visible markup, so a design change cannot silently break it.

Do FAQ rich results still work?

Not for most sites. Google restricted FAQ rich results to authoritative government and health sites in 2023 and has not reversed it. The markup is still worth shipping, because Q&A pairs are the cleanest extractable format for AI answer engines.

What is a canonical tag for?

A canonical tag tells search engines which URL is the preferred version when the same content is reachable at several addresses. It consolidates ranking signals onto the URL you nominate, rather than letting the engine choose for you.

SEO

Does my website need schema markup?

It is not a ranking factor, and it is worth adding. Structured data removes ambiguity about who you are and what you sell, which is what makes rich results possible and what answer engines increasingly parse in preference to guessing from prose.

Answered by Anas Bin Masud 168 words 3 sections

The minimum useful graph

Organization and Person — who is behind the site
WebSite and WebPage — the structure
BreadcrumbList — navigation context
Service or Product with an Offer on commercial pages
Article with author and publisher on content

The mistake that makes it worthless

Unlinked islands. An Organization node and a Person node that never reference each other are two unrelated assertions. Joined by founder and worksFor, they describe a business with a human in it — which is what you meant.

What risks a penalty

Review or AggregateRating markup for reviews that are not visible or that you wrote. It is the most commonly penalised structured-data violation there is, and the correct response to having no reviews yet is no rating markup at all.

The longer version

This answer is deliberately short. If you want the full treatment, Schema markup that does something, and the kind that risks a penalty covers it in about 3 minutes — free, ungated, written from client work.

Who answered this

Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan — fifteen live client sites, six of them stores taking real payments. These answers come from those projects rather than from a content brief. More about how I work, or ask me something directly.