Yes, you can add JSON structured data to the body of your pages

Head or body, Mueller explains that Google can read both just fine.

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JSON structured data can be inserted in the head as well as the body of your pages, Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller explained on the September 11 edition of #AskGoogleWebmasters.

The question. “Is it possible to insert JSON structured data at the bottom of the <body> instead of the <head>? It seems to work fine for many websites,” asked user @largow via Twitter.

The answer. Yes, you can insert JSON structured data either in the body or the head. Mueller also took this opportunity to explain the three structured data formats that Google supports.

  • RDFa, “an HTML5 extension that supports link data through additional attributes added to existing HTML tags on the page,” Mueller described.
  • Microdata, “an open community HTML specification used to nest structured data within HTML content. Like RDFa, it also uses HTML tag attributes for this.”
  • JSON-LD, “a JavaScript notation embedded in a script tag in the page head or in the body. The markup is not interleaved with user-visible text, which makes nested data items easier to express.” Mueller also mentioned that this format can be injected into you pages via JavaScript.

Why we should care. Rich results aren’t going anywhere, so it’s on SEOs to adapt their efforts to the search results page. Structured data implementation is one way to do so and knowing the formats that search engines support as well as how they process your structured data may increase your visibility.

Learn more about structured data. Here are a few additional resources to help you expand your mastery of structured data.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

George Nguyen
Contributor
George Nguyen is the Director of SEO Editorial at Wix, where he manages the Wix SEO Learning Hub. His career is focused on disseminating best practices and reducing misinformation in search. George formerly served as an editor for Search Engine Land, covering organic and paid search.

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