Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Some argue that in the world of marketing, ebooks are dead. Others say they are not. But the fact is that ebooks — when written, designed, and marketed properly — can generate thousands upon thousands of contact submissions for your business. Whether you’re just getting started with ebook creation as a marketing tool, or you’re reconsidering the role of ebooks in your existing content strategy, you’re likely asking yourself an important question: What is the best ebook format for the ebooks in my marketing library?It’s important to note that this question can be answered in two different ways:

What is the best ebook format for content creation?
What is the best ebook format for content consumption?

Here, we’ll cover best practices for both of these topics — and explain how HubSpot’s Ebook Templates can help you achieve your marketing team’s lead generation goals.
Featured Resource: 18 Free Ebook Formatting & Creation Templates
Download Free Ebook Templates
Need help formatting your ebooks? Our collection of 18 free ebook templates will help you create and format your ebook content for an incredible reader experience in Microsoft PowerPoint, Adobe InDesign, and Google Slides so that you can format your ebooks in the way that best suits your marketing team and your content readers.
The 3 Best Ebook Formats for Content Creation
1. Adobe InDesign

Adobe’s advanced design software gives content creators a myriad of options for creating and formatting their ebooks.
These advanced features do come at a price, but experienced marketing designers rely on Adobe InDesign because of those features.Click Here to Download 6 Adobe InDesign Ebook Templates.
Pros:
Adobe is known for being feature-rich. As a result, you can expect your ebooks to look their best when made with InDesign, as you’ll be able to create and incorporate original design elements right in your document.
Cons:
For an inexperienced designer or for the marketer who just needs to get a serviceable offer released, the bells and whistles that InDesign offers might not be necessary. InDesign’s interface and usability aren’t the most straightforward, and could require you to put in more effort than is needed for your final deliverable.
2. Google Slides

Google Slides is a simpler tool for making an ebook when compared to InDesign, and the fact that documents live online mean you can collaborate in real-time with your team members to make a fantastic deliverable. Oh — and it’s free, which is helpful if you have a limited marketing budget. Click Here to Download 6 Google Slides Ebook Templates.
Pros:
Google Slides is a great tool for marketers who need to make a good ebook quickly — especially if you’re working alongside team members and are sourcing feedback from them. The interface of Slides is arguably more straightforward than InDesign’s, meaning you can move and edit creative elements faster if you’re new to both tools.
Cons:
Because Google Slides is primarily a presentation tool rather than an ebook creation tool, you may miss out on some necessary features that would help make your ebooks the quality they need to be in order to warrant your leads’ attention.
Conversely, you might need to make design elements elsewhere, such as an Adobe software or Canva, and later import these creative elements into your Slides deck. This could create an inconsistent creation experience if you need to track down design elements after you’ve created them.
3. Microsoft PowerPoint

A slightly more advanced option than Google Slides — but not quite as advanced as Adobe software — PowerPoint is another presentation-making platform that can be used to design an ebook.
Pros:
PowerPoint has some features that Google Slides does not, such as better effects for designing. PowerPoint is also an offline software, meaning you can build your ebooks without wifi.
Cons:
PowerPoint is a paid software, as opposed to a free tool available in G Suite. You’ll also be in asynchronous communication with your team if you’re collaborating with them on edits and additions. Lastly, while it has better creative features than Slides, it doesn’t come close to the advanced features of InDesign.
Click Here to Download 6 Microsoft PowerPoint Ebook Templates.
The 2 Best Ebook Formats for Consumption
1. Interactive PDF
The best ebook format for ebook consumption is an interactive Portable Document Format, or PDF. PDFs are the go-to option for content marketing ebooks for many reasons — among them the consistency of their design and readability on different devices.We at HubSpot use PDFs for our ebooks because we can embed links to relevant pages and sources in them, can upload them right into our content library and File Manager, and trust that the design will appear as intended if our leads open the ebook in Chrome, Safari, Preview, on their phones, or on a desktop.
The interactive nature also means if we include an open text box for readers to complete an activity in the book (like in our Content Marketing Workbook), readers can complete the activity in whatever application they’re consuming the content.
2. EPUB

EPUB, short for electronic publication and saved with an .epub file extension, is another way for you to save your ebooks. EPUBs rose in popularity after becoming a prominent ebook format for e-readers, but given its accessibility on Apple macOS and iOS products via Apple Books, the format is also a viable — though somewhat limiting — option for content marketing ebooks.
One unique feature of the .epub file format is its scrollability. To mimic the reading of an actual book, readers can view one page at a time and must scroll or swipe horizontally, as opposed to vertical scrolling with PDFs, which gives your readers the feeling of reading a book as opposed to interacting with website content. However, this also means readers might have to do more work to navigate the content and find the information they are looking for. Additionally, video and audio files can be embedded in the .epub format, unlike PDFs, which means your readers can consume more interactive content without leaving the ebook.
If you’re tired of the PDF option and want to spruce up your content format, you can save your InDesign ebooks as an .epub file – just be prepared for some readers being unable to read your content, which is something you likely don’t want to be the case.
Formatting Your Ebooks
There’s no one perfect ebook format, but that just means there’s more options for your team to work with.
If you’re just getting started, we recommended using Google Slides – since you’ll be able to collaborate with your team more easily, create your content for free, and see how your audience reacts to ebooks before making a major investment in time and resources.
As you scale, and if you’re able to work with a designer, we suggest formatting your ebooks in InDesign. When it comes to saving your ebooks, it’s best to stick with the interactive PDF format for wider accessibility.Either way, make sure you check out HubSpot’s 18 Ebook Templates for free InDesign, PowerPoint, and Slides templates to build, format, and design your ebooks.

Last Updated on December 17, 2020 by Rakesh Gupta Big Idea or Enduring Question: How to utilize the Flow and set up email-to-lead in salesforce?  Lightning Flow is a powerful feature provided by Salesforce to minimize the code in your … Continue reading →

Last Updated on December 19, 2020 by Rakesh Gupta Big Idea or Enduring Question: How to utilize the Flow and set up email-to-lead in salesforce?  Salesforce Flow is a powerful feature provided by Salesforce to minimize the code in your … Continue reading →

As a marketer, I’d like to believe all my marketing efforts are high-impact.
Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case.
Consider the blog post that resulted in 25 views, and 0 leads — or the Facebook campaign that totally flopped, with a much lower ROI than expected.
Of course, high-impact marketing is any marketer’s goal. High-impact marketing means you’re getting the biggest bang for your buck, and that your time and resources are having a strong, positive impact on your business’ bottom-line.
But high-impact marketing is easier said than done. Here, we’ll explore what high-impact marketing is, examples of high-impact marketing, and finally, how you might maximize your own marketing efforts for highest possible impact.
Let’s dive in.

What is high-impact marketing?
High-impact marketing is any marketing efforts that have significant impact on your business’ bottom-line.
High-impact marketing can range depending on your business goals and industry — additionally, high-impact marketing doesn’t necessarily correlate with the amount of money you spend.
For instance, perhaps you create a low-budget YouTube video that results in thousands of views, and a 15% lead conversion rate. That’s high-impact, regardless of the amount of money you put into the video.
Fortunately, this means high-impact marketing doesn’t have to break the bank to be effective. 
Of course, which types of marketing will have a high impact on your bottom-line depends on your unique marketing goals. For instance, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, perhaps you find Instagram has the highest impact. Alternatively, if your goal is to establish thought leadership, perhaps you find you have higher impact by guest posting on various blogs.
Examples of High-Impact Marketing
To fully understand the definition of high-impact marketing, let’s consider a few examples of high-impact marketing in-action:

A YouTube strategy that increases leads for your company while reaching new audiences and increasing brand awareness.
A podcast advertisement that increases sales for your new product.
A PR campaign that increases positive perception of your brand, as measured by a public perception survey.
A blog post with a 10% conversion rate, higher than industry standards.
An Instagram post that receives high engagement rates and increases your account’s follower count.
An online co-marketing webinar that enables you to reach new networks via your partner’s channels.

There are many more, of course, but ultimately, these examples are meant to demonstrate just how wide-ranging high-impact marketing can be.

High-impact marketing will depend on your goals, industry, and the types of marketing best-suited for your brand. What results in a high ROI for one company could be a waste of time for another.

Next, let’s dive into some specific high-marketing techniques you might implement depending on your goals to drive lasting results for your company.
How to Maximize Your Marketing’s Impact
1. Ensure you’re targeting the right audience.
Best for: Brand awareness, increased leads.
To create the highest-impact marketing campaigns, it’s critical you do your research to ensure you’re targeting your ideal audience.
Of course, your audience will vary depending on your goals. For instance, perhaps you’re putting together an online event targeted towards entrepreneurs. If that’s the case, you’ll want to target a wide audience by identifying any social media users who’ve shown an interest in entrepreneurship. Since your goal is to get as many attendees as possible, you don’t need to get too hyper-targeted.
Alternatively, let’s say you’re looking to increase sales on a new product. If that’s the case, you don’t want to target a large audience — instead, you want to focus on a select group of people who seem ready-to-buy. In that case, you’ll want to target viewers who’ve visited a landing page for your product, or viewers who’ve clicked on an ad for that product over the last six months.
Ultimately, you don’t want to spend too much money or resources targeting people who are never going to convert, so for truly high-impact marketing, it’s critical you take the time to target the right audiences.
Take a look at How to Find Your Target Audience to learn how to identify the right audience for your own goals.
2. Create a strong partnership program.
Best for: Reaching new audiences.
A partnership program, or co-marketing campaign, can help you reach new audiences, demonstrate expertise in your industry, create high-quality content for leads and customers, and so much more.
Additionally, backlinks from other companies is invaluable for SEO, so a partnership program is a win-win on all accounts.
To create a truly impactful co-marketing campaign, consider hosting a webinar with a partner, creating an e-book with a partner to share with the partner’s network and increase brand exposure, or writing a series of guest blog posts for each other’s sites.
Co-marketing campaigns can have high impact by delivering exceptional value to leads and customers. For instance, consider this actionable guide HubSpot created with LinkedIn to help viewers learn how to get the most out of their LinkedIn marketing efforts.
While HubSpot could have written its own content regarding LinkedIn best practices, it’s higher-value when it combines forces with LinkedIn. Additionally, this ebook is now shown to both HubSpot and LinkedIn networks, ensuring broader reach.
Best of all, co-marketing efforts don’t have to be high-budget. In fact, partnership programs can be incredibly cost-effective, since you’re dividing the amount of resources needed by half.
3. Publish on various social channels.
Best for: Increased brand exposure, establishing thought leadership in an industry.
Social media is one of the most effective opportunities to achieve any of your marketing goals.
Don’t believe me? Consider this: 54% of social browsers use social media to research products.
Additionally, 73% of marketers believe that their efforts through social media marketing have been “somewhat effective” or “very effective” for their business.
Best of all, social media is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies.
Of course, a social media strategy needs to be comprehensive to be as high-impact as possible. For instance, to increase thought leadership, you might consider asking executives to post thought leadership content regularly on LinkedIn and share it with experts in the industry. Alternatively, perhaps you’ll want to post advice from industry leaders on your own Instagram or YouTube accounts.
Additionally, it’s critical you ensure you’re using the best platforms to reach the right audiences. There’s a wide variety to choose from — including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, YouTube, Twitter, and more.
Conduct research to find where your target audience spends the most time, and then alter your strategy accordingly.
4. Maximize referrals.
Best for: Increased sales.
Considering it costs anywhere from five to 25 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, it makes sense that you’ll want to leverage existing customers for high-impact marketing.
The inbound flywheel is made up of three sections: Attract, Engage, and Delight. To create sustainable, long-term growth, it’s critical you enable your flywheel to reach maximum speed.
To do this, you might create a formal referral program, in which existing customers earn a discount for recommending new customers.
Additionally, you might consider encouraging current social media followers to refer new followers to your social pages. To incentivize them, you could host a giveaway — if a follower tags 3-5 friends in the comments section, they have the chance to win.
You’ll also want to ensure customers have a good experience with your brand, start-to-finish. If customers are impressed with your customer service, for example, they’re more likely to recommend you to friends for free.
Now that’s high-impact.
5. Optimize for SEO.
Best for: Demonstrating expertise, increasing exposure to new audiences.
Finally, optimizing your website, blog posts, and even social media pages for SEO is critical for long-term marketing success.
Your blog posts, for instance, will be much higher-impact if they appear in search results for related queries. Otherwise, email and social media traffic can only get you so far.
Additionally, your website will have much higher-impact on your company’s bottom-line if it ranks in the top ten search results for related keywords.
Consider, for instance, the impact your website might have on sales if prospects are able to find your company whenever they search for products or services related to your industry.
An SEO strategy is a long-term play, but it’s one of the best opportunities you have for creating content that continues to impact your bottom-line well into the future.

It’s Friday afternoon, and your team is jonesing for Happy Hour.
For the last few weeks, you’ve been going to the same ol’ bar by your office, so you decide it’s time to try something new. What do you do? Step outside and walk around until you find a new spot? No, you hop on Google and let it conduct the search for you.
Your ideal post-work pub is nearby, open right after work, and offers a few gluten-free options so your entire team can partake. You plug these criteria into Google, and you’ve got three viable options at your fingertips — in a handy map format to boot.
Pause. Have you ever wondered how Google can whip up such accurate, precise answers in so little time … and present them in such an easy-to-read way? Moreover, what are those restaurants doing to get featured so dominantly on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs)?
Heck, I’d love my business to pop up when consumers search for criteria relevant to me … wouldn’t you?
No one knows exactly how Google’s algorithm works — but, there are a few ways to organize and optimize your website content so Google knows what content to feature on the SERPs for the various searches people conduct to find you.
This is where structured data comes in. Structured data can make your organization more visible to potential customers and increase your click-through rate by up to 30%.
Not sure what structured data is? That’s OK. By the end of this guide, you’ll be a structured data wizard — and your website will reap the benefits.

We know that what searchers see online is much different than what search engines see.
While searchers see this…
Source
… search engines see this:

View the source code for any website by going to View > Developer > View Source.
This behind-the-scenes code tells browsers how information should be organized on the website (as part of its website development) and tells web crawlers what’s on the page.
Structured data is also at play here. Embedded tags of code (a.k.a. “markup”) throughout the HTML of a webpage tell Google and other search engines what information to display in the SERPs and what this information represents. It also helps social media platforms synthesize your social media posts into snippets that preview the content using Open Graph Protocol (which we touch on later).
This markup is important. It educates search engines on what specific content is on the page. This creates more relevant, informed searches and makes the site a candidate for enhanced results like featured snippets, rich snippets, image and video carousels, knowledge boxes, and more (which we’ll touch on later).

Google’s SERPs weren’t always as easy on the eye as they are today. Don’t remember? Check out this Google result for “pool tables” from 2008.

Source
Let’s compare. Here’s the same result from today.

Wow. That’s a world of difference. Not only are these results easier to read, but the extra features make for a much more informative, intelligent searching — and shopping — experience. Between the sponsored content and live map (plus the product carousel, question snippets, and related searches not shown in the screenshot), Google provides pretty much everything I need to know about pool tables.
Heck, sometimes I search for something and find the answer right on the SERP — I don’t even have to click on a result. Does that ever happen to you? If it has, you can thank structured data.
How does structured data work?
At this point, you might be asking: How can there exist a language (markup) that is consistently recognized by search engines and people alike?
In order for this markup to be accurately and universally understood, there are standardized formats and vocabularies that should be used.
Let’s go back to basics for a minute. When conveying information, whether you’re communicating with a human or a computer, you need two main things: vocabulary (a set of words with known meanings) and syntax (a set of rules on how to use those words to convey meaning).
Most terminology surrounding structured data markup can be organized into these two concepts — vocabularies and syntaxes — and webmasters can combine whichever two they need to structure their data (with the exception of Microformats).

VocabulaRY
SYNTAX

Schema.org
Microdata

DCMI
JSON-LD

FOAF
RDFa

Okay … that’s enough of the fancy developer speak. What should you be using for your structured data?
Schema.org is the accepted universal vocabulary standard for structured data. It was founded and is currently sponsored by Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex. It’s flexible, open-sourced, and constantly updated and improved.
Note: Schema is called such because it features markup for a wide variety of schemas — or data models — for different types of content.
Here’s an example of Schema Markup language (which is good for SEO) pulled from my article on branding.
“@context” : “http://schema.org”,
“@type” : “Article”,
“name” : “The Ultimate Guide to Branding in 2019”
“author” : {
“@type” : “Person”,
“name” : “Allie Decker”
},
“datePublished” : “2019-04-02”,
“image” : “https://blog.hubspot.com/hubfs/branding-2.jpg”,
“url” : “https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/branding”,
“publisher” : {
“@type” : “Organization”,
“name” : “HubSpot”
As for syntax, there’s no correct answer. Google recommends JSON-LD (and defaults to that syntax when using its Structured Data Markup Helper — as you see below). JSON-LD uses Javascript code and embedded widgets to dynamically display your content, which is typically a simpler development process.
Google also recognizes Microdata and RDFa. Both of these syntaxes use HTML to identify properties within structured data. Microdata is typically only used in the page body, whereas RDFa is commonly used in both the page head and body.
On the other hand, JSON-LD is only placed in the page head, meaning, for certain types of markup, JSON-LD makes it so you don’t have to navigate subheaders, supporting copy, and related styling that’s included in the page’s HTML. This is why JSON-LD is considered simpler than the other two.
Ultimately, it all depends on the data you’re trying to implement, what the benefit is to your website, and what would be easier to share with your team.
Structured Data and Mobile
Structured data affects mobile a little differently — through Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). Accelerated Mobile Pages is a Google-backed, open source project to help all mobile pages load quickly regardless of device.
Pages with AMP markup appear within Google’s special SERP features, such as Top Stories and News Carousels. Here’s how to create an AMP HTML page.

Source
Structured Data and Social Media
Structured data markup works a little differently for social platforms. This requires Open Graph Protocol and similar languages that ensure your website and blog content appear in an easy-to-read way when you promote this content on a social network. Two common social media features that use Open Graph Protocol are Pinterest Rich Pins and Twitter cards. We talk more about how to do this below.
Here’s an example of Open Graph Protocol language (which is good for social media) using the same source.
<meta property=”og:title” content=”The Ultimate Guide to Branding in 2019”/>
<meta property=”og:type” content=”article”/>
<meta property=”og:URL” content=”https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/branding”
<meta property=”og:image” content=”https://blog.hubspot.com/hubfs/branding-2.jpg”
<meta property=”og:admins” content=”Allie Decker”
<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”HubSpot”
<meta property=”og:description” content=”Discover how to create and manage a brand that helps your business become known, loved, and preferred”
Note: Unfortunately, structured data doesn’t impact your organic search ranking (besides helping you grab a spot in a knowledge panel or Featured Snippet at the top of the list). It also doesn’t change how your content looks or behaves on your website — it only affects how and where it might appear on SERPs.

Examples of Structured Data
To the average internet user, structured data can’t be seen. It’s hidden among the code that makes up our favorite websites and online platforms. So, how does structured data affect what we (and our customers) see? What does it look like to the “naked” eye?
When webmasters adhere to structured data standards, search engines like Google and Bing reward their websites and organizations by featuring their content in a variety of SERP features (another reason to use structured data).
Source
Let’s talk about those features — specifically on Google. Google SERPs display a wide variety of information, but the ones we talk about below are specifically influenced by structured data.
There are also a couple of ways that structured data can benefit your non-SERP marketing efforts on social media and email marketing.
Content Features
Content features appear as separate search results among normal search results.
1. Carousels
Carousels show up as images with captions related to a search, such as movie actors, cars, or news articles. Searchers can click through these images to access a separate SERP for that search. Here’s how to use structured data to show up on Carousels.

2. Videos
Videos function similarly to carousels but feature videos instead of images or other listings. Searchers can scroll through these results to directly access and watch each video.
Based on how you mark-up your content, you may also qualify for video enhancements such as LIVE badges and video host carousels. Here’s how to use structured data to show up on videos.

3. Featured Snippets
Featured Snippets display information relevant to a query — and link to a third-party website (which sets them apart from Answer Boxes and Knowledge Panels, which draw from public domain databases). They don’t count as one of the ten organic results on a SERP, so if you “win” the Snippet, your website shows up twice.
Featured Snippets can also be displayed as quotes, tables, jobs, rich cards (for movies and recipes), or the question section titled “People may ask”. Here’s how to optimize your content for Google’s Featured Snippet box.

4. Knowledge Panels (a.k.a. Knowledge Graph Cards)
Knowledge Panels pull together the most relevant information from a search and display it as a separate panel on the right side of a SERP. They typically include images, dates, and category-specific information, such as stock prices for companies or birthdays for celebrities. You can use a structured data markup like Schema to tag your content with all of these categories, but there’s no guarantee that Google will reward you with your own knowledge panel.
In fact, structured data doesn’t promise anything, it only makes it easier for search engines and social networks to interpret your content.
Also, Knowledge Panels aim to answer queries without requiring a click-through … good news for searchers, and bad news for businesses. Here’s how to make your site easier for bots to crawl (to increase your chances of showing up in a Knowledge Panel).

Enriched Search Features
Unlike content features, enriched result features enhance regular search results. They’re also called rich search results or rich snippets.
1. Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs “indicate a page’s position in the site hierarchy,” according to Google. Breadcrumbs appear on mobile devices, in place of a URL, above the title of the results page, and next to the site’s favicon (as of 2019). They help searchers understand a page’s relationship to the rest of a website. Here’s how to use structured data to display breadcrumbs in your results.

2. Sitelinks and Sitelinks Searchbox
Sitelinks are additional links displayed beneath a search result that navigate to different parts of a website. Google pulls them into a SERP when it thinks additional results would benefit a searcher. Websites with intelligent anchor text and alt text that’s informative, compact, and avoids repetition have a good chance of displaying a result with Sitelinks.

Sitelinks Searchbox is like Sitelinks with a search bar directly featured in the result. That search box uses Google — not the featured website — which creates a brand new SERP. Sitelinks Searchboxes only show up in branded searches.
Here’s how to get a Sitelinks Searchbox for your website.

3. FAQ
FAQ can be used on any page that lists questions and answers — not just traditional frequently asked questions (FAQ) pages.
This feature allows searchers to access your questions and answers right from the SERP; it also extends your result vertically, taking up even more SERP real estate and helping your site stand out. Here’s how to use structured data to display FAQ in your search results.

4. How-To
The how-to feature is similar to FAQ in that it displays a page’s content (if it fits certain criteria) on the SERP so searchers can see that information. It walks searchers through a set of steps and can feature video, text, and images.
Unlike FAQ, the individual steps in how-to result aren’t linkable; however, searchers can access the entire list of steps by clicking your results. These results can show up in two formats: standard accordion layout or rich result carousel, depending on the content. Here’s how to use structured data to display how-to content in your search results.
Source

Non-SERP Features
Structured data can also be used to enhance to non-SERP features.

1. Social Cards
Social-specific markup doesn’t have a big impact on SEO, but it’s still important for marketers to understand. Not only does this markup enhance your social posts and ad efforts, but it can also be read by search engines — which could contribute to any SEO changes in the future.
Social cards display images and rich text when links are shared on social media. Any organization who uses social media to share content should be using proper social markup, such as Open Graph Protocol.
Here’s how you ensure your social content displays social cards:

Open Graph Protocol (for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram)
Facebook Validation Tool
Twitter Cards
Twitter Validation Tool
Pinterest Rich Pins
Pinterest Validation Tool

2. Email Marketing
Have you recently booked a flight or ordered something online? If you have Gmail, you might’ve seen your reservation or order details summarized at the top of the confirmation email. This is due to email markup.
If you send emails for orders, reservations, confirmations, or bookings, consider using email markup to make your email recipients’ lives easier. Here’s how to get started with email markup in Gmail.

The concept of structured data might seem confusing, but its implementation isn’t nearly as complicated. In fact, there are a number of structured data tools that can help you along the way, namely Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper and Testing tools. Sure, you can implement structured data by hand, but Google’s tool ensures accuracy — and makes your life easier.
It’s important to note that adding structured data markup on your website doesn’t guarantee a Featured Snippet or Sitelinks Sitebox. Google can take weeks to crawl your new HTML markup, and sometimes, the information doesn’t show up at all.
However, taking the steps to implement structured data is critical. Google might be smart, but it can’t (yet) understand everything on its own. It might seem like a lot of extra work, but using the correct structured data markup will ensure Google can make sense of your content and can help you potentially increase your click-through rates and visibility.
Here’s how to implement structured data by using Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper tool.
1. Open Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper.
Open up Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper tool.

2. Select your data type and enter the URL.
Make sure the Website tab is open. Choose the type of data to which you’d like to add the HTML markup. Plug the web page URL (or the HTML code) at the bottom, and click Start Tagging.

3. Highlight page elements and assign data tags.
When the tool loads, you should see your web page on the left side and data items on the right. Highlight different components of your web page to assign data tags such as name, author, and date published. (The tool will suggest different data tags for different types of data, i.e. Events or Book Reviews.)

As you select and assign data tags, you’ll see the information pop up under My Data Tags on the right panel. You can also add any missing tags that might not be visible on the web page; just click Add missing tags.
4. Create the HTML.
When you’re finished tagging and assigning data items, click Create HTML in the upper right-hand corner.
5. Add the schema markup to your page.
On the next screen, you should see your structured data markup on the right side. The tool automatically produces the script as JSON-LD markup, but you can change it to Microdata by clicking the JSON-LD drop-down menu in the top menu.

Click Download to download the script as an HTML file. To read more about adding structured data to your article (or any other data type), click Articles in the right corner above the markup.
To “publish” your markup, copy and paste the new HTML markup into your CMS or source code of your web page. Lastly, click Finish in the top right corner to check out Google’s recommended Next Steps … one of which will bring you to this next one.
6. Test your markup with Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
Open up Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. You can enter any URL of a web page you’d like to test, or you can enter HTML code. (In the example below, I’m analyzing the code previously produced by Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper Tool.) Click Run Test to begin.

7. Diagnose and fix any detected issues.
The tool will show you your HTML markup on the left side and the markup analysis on the right. Note any red errors or warnings. Click on any data row to highlight the corresponding markup on the left.
If necessary, you can edit any errors in the HTML directly in the tool panel before “publishing” the tested HTML markup.
8. Be patient.
This last step is simple but arguably the hardest — to sit back and wait. Google can take weeks to re-crawl new HTML, and even then, your content isn’t guaranteed to show up in rich snippets or other SERP features.
As long as you follow the correct structured data standards and markup, give Google all the information it needs to know, and be patient, your website and business can benefit greatly from structured data and enhanced SEO.
Structured Data Testing Tools

1. Google’s Rich Results Test

Supports structured data in JSON-LD, RDFa, and Microdata. 
Price: Free
Google’s tool is an easy, free option for quickly checking any web page — or even an individual snippet code — to ensure your site is structured correctly. The tool will flag any errors that could be preventing your site from ranking on search engines, and offer suggestions for improving your site or snippet’s structured data. 
The Rich Results Test allows you to share the test results with anyone for up to 90 days, so if you need to send the results to your web developer or IT team, you can. 
Best of all, the tool shows you how your page might look on Google search results, which means you can make changes to your structured data in real-time and see how those changes positively or negatively affect how your page shows up on various Search results layouts, including both desktop and mobile. 
(It’s important to note, Google used to provide a Structured Data Testing tool, but that tool is now being deprecated and replaced with the Rich Results Test.) 

2. Bing Markup Validator

Supports structured data in HTML Microdata, Microformats, RDFa, Schema.org, and OpenGraph.
Price: Free
Since Bing is the second largest search engine, it makes sense to try out Bing’s own structured data tool to assess your website’s health and performance and ensure you’re following structured data protocol to get your website ranking on the major search engine. 
Bing’s free Markup Validator is part of Bing’s larger Webmaster Tools, which enable you to monitor the health of your site, see for which keywords you currently rank, and see how Bing crawls and indexes your website. 
Unfortunately, Bing’s Markup Validator doesn’t support HTML structured code, but it’s still a good option to check out, particularly if you’re looking to improve your ranking on Bing.  
3. SEO Site Checkup
Supports structured data in HTML, and offers website SEO analysis.
Price: $39.95/month 
This is the only tool in this list that isn’t free (although it does offer a 14-day free trial for you to initially check a few web pages), but for good reason — it offers a more well-rounded, comprehensive SEO analysis of your website, as well. 
Along with offering feedback on your structured data (and competitors’ URLs, if you’re interested), you can use the tool to assess overall SEO health, including page load speed, URL redirects, broken links, mobile responsiveness, and much more. 
Apart from evaluating your site’s standard data, the tool will check your website for SEO issues such as page load speed, URL redirects, nested tables, broken links, mobile responsiveness, and much more. It serves as a one-window solution for optimizing your site for search engine ranking.

4. Chrome Extension: Structured Data Testing Tool

Supports structured data in Microdata, Schema, RDFa and JSON-LD. 
Price: Free
If you primarily use the Chrome internet browser, this is a good alternative to Google’s Rich Results Test, since it’s essentially the same tool for Chrome users. The tool uses Google’s Structured Data testing tool to scan websites, and delivers both warnings and error codes. You can then export these error codes to your clipboard. 
Best of all, you can use this extension on websites in the development or staging phases, or password-protected pages, to ensure your structured data is clean before launching your site. The extension will scan structured data and check your rich snippets, as well. 
Get Started with Structured Data Today
Google and other search engines continuously improve how they aggregate and present information. They offer enhanced, intelligent search experiences with the customer in mind. It’s up to you as a business to keep up, and you can do so through structured data.
Structured data benefits businesses — through increased visibility — and consumers — through better usability. Use this guide, tools, and resources to optimize and organize your website and make your customers’ lives easier.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.