Structured data equates rich snippets in the SERPs. And Rich snippets equates more traffic.
Search engines make use of structured data to better understand your webpages and thereby display rich snippets in their search engine results pages for your listing. And it goes without saying that this can increase your overall CTR (click through rate).
You can manually add structured data to your webpages by editing the HTML code. Though this method is not the easiest and can require some technical know how. An alternative and a much simpler way of achieving this is to use the data highlighter tool in the Google search console. Of-course this way of adding structured data will generate rich snippets only for Google search engine but if that's what you are looking for, then this article is a beginner's tutorial on how you can achieve this. So let's get started.
Adding Structured Data Using Google's Data Highlighter Tool
Here are the steps required to get started with Google's structured data highlighter tool.
Step 1: The first step is to register your site with Google search console (formerly Google Webmaster tools). If your site is not already registered, you can register by clicking this link.
Step 2: Once registered, login to your Google search console, click on your website to manage it and then go to Search Appearance > Data Highlighter and click on the Start Highlighting button.
Step 3: In the dialog box that follows, enter the URL of one of the pages that you want to tag. (Note that all other related pages will be tagged automatically). From the Type of information to highlight drop-down menu, select the type that fits the page. For instance, if it is a product listing page, select Product, and if it is a page with details about an event, select Event. (Refer image below)
Make sure that tag this page and others like it is tagged and click on the OK button.
Step 4: You should now be presented with the first page to be tagged. Start tagging this page by highlighting the content to be tagged with your cursor and then selecting the appropriate tag from the drop down menu. For instance, highlight the title of the page and select Title from the drop-down. Do so for the date, author name etc. Once you add a tag, you should be able to view it in the right panel.
If you have a page with similar listings then tag the first two listings and all remaining listings will be tagged automatically. (Refer image below)
The image below shows tags added to an article page:
Step 5: Once you have finished tagging the first page, click on 'Done' button on the top right corner or your screen and you will be presented with a 'Create a Page Set' dialog box which also shows the total number of related pages that data-highlighter automatically found.
Add a suitable name and click on 'Create page set'.
Step 6: Now you should be presented with 4 to 5 similar pages with tags automatically added (as per the tags added to the first page). Click Next button to scroll through these pages checking if the tagging is correct. Once you are satisfied with the results, click on 'Finished' button.
Step 7: That's it, you are done. You should now be able to see this particular 'Page Set' once you click on the data highlighter link and click on it if you want to make any further edits.
In a similar way, you can create and add different page sets for different pages of your site. Like a Event page set for all the events pages. A product page set for product page and article page set for article pages.