The web is a loose linking of web pages with information, structured content allows search engines to better identify and assign the content of a page. A Joomla! website does not normally generate structured content for your pages / articles. Structured content is not magic but just a (structured) collection of information of your page(s) in a predefined form. These are then displayed in the header of your website within a script tag where search engines can read them and process them together with the visible content of your page.

The WidgetsBox as a module that displays a collection of article elements is a predestined platform for generating structured content. With structured content it is possible that search engines can display your content as rich content. However, it is not a guarantee. The good thing about our WidgetsBox is that you don't need to be a specialist when it comes to structured content. All you have to do is tell the module where to find the information you need.

Your Job

Don't get me wrong, for the webmaster (presumably you) it is still an effort. Because you are responsible that the corresponding information is also available in the correct form (but you can find the necessary information in this document and others on the subject). Depending on the type of structured content you have to invest more or less work to generate your content as structured content. If invalid or wrong information is defined for fields it is very likely that the structured content will be ignored or in the worst case it can have a negative impact on the SEO rating of your website. I have tried as much as possible to include checks so that structured content is generated only when all the necessary information is given in the correct form. Nevertheless, after activating and configuring the module, I recommend every user to make a check with the official checker of Google(https://search.google.com/test/rich-results) to check if the structured content is generated and if it is ok.

Structured content needs.... Structured contents

Confused? Rightly so! But what I want to say is actually quite simple. The WidgetsBox creates and publishes for you the JSON LD schema for structured content that search engines like. But for the WidgetsBox to do that, the information in your articles must be structured as well. This is where custom fields come in handy. There are different rich content types. For some like FAQ's it is not necessary to work with customfields - the module simply loads the information from title (Question) & text (Answer). But other types like Events or Products need much more information and require that your articles are populated with the appropriate data (custom fields) that contains the relevant information.Which fields and which formats are necessary is listed in the instructions of the respective type. In the module settings you only have to choose which customfield contains which information.