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AEO Canon · the reference for answer-engine optimization
AEO Glossary

Schema Markup

Schema markup is structured data added to a page using schema.org vocabulary that tells machines explicitly what the content is, helping AI systems understand and trust your information.

Also known as: structured data, schema.org

BBurke Atkerson

Schema markup labels your content so machines read it correctly. Using the shared schema.org vocabulary — usually written in JSON-LD — it states explicitly what a page contains: this is an article, this is its author, this is a FAQ, this is a product and its price. It removes guesswork about your content's meaning.

For AEO, schema is best understood as entity-clarity infrastructure, not a citation trick. It won't, by itself, get you cited — but it helps engines correctly identify your entity, connect author and organization, and interpret structured elements like FAQs and reviews, which supports the credibility and extractability pillars. Think of it as making your page unambiguous to a machine, so it's less likely to misread or misattribute you.

Example. Adding Article and Author schema to a post tells an engine exactly who wrote it and what it's about, helping it attribute the piece to the right person and organization rather than inferring — or guessing wrong.

Relevant pillars

Related terms