In today's digital landscape, standing out in search results isn't just about having great content—it's about making that content easily understood by search engines. For arts and culture venues, structured data is your secret weapon for better visibility and enhanced search appearances.
What is structured data?
Structured data is a standardised format that provides explicit clues about the meaning of your web page content to search engines. Think of it as speaking search engines' language, helping them understand not just what your content says, but what it means. This will make it easier for search engines to crawl your web pages and improve your SEO performance.
For arts venues, this is particularly powerful because it helps search engines understand:
- What events you're hosting
- Who's performing
- When shows are happening
- Where they're taking place
- How much tickets cost
- What type of performances they are
Why does structured data matter for cultural venues?
When implemented correctly, structured data can lead to enhanced search results known as "rich snippets." These can include:
- Event details directly in search results
- Ticket prices and availability
- Performance dates and times
- Artist information
- Venue location details
These rich snippets can significantly improve your click-through rates because they make your search listings more informative, engaging and prominent.
What data matters most?
For arts and culture venues, key structured data elements include:
- Events: Clearly define event details like dates, times, performers, location, and ticketing information.
- People: Provide information about artists, performers, and groups involved in your events.
- Organisation: Share essential details about your venue, including name, address, and logo.
- Breadcrumbs: Help search engines understand the structure of your website and how pages relate to each other.
The hidden complexity of structured data
Structured data uses a standardised format called schema.org to categorise and describe your content. It's like providing a backstage pass to search engine bots so they can easily crawl and interpret your website.
Many venues using generalist website platforms and CMSs like WordPress and Craft struggle with structured data implementation. Due to the unique needs of cultural venues and the complexities of event data, structured data implementation requires:
- Custom development work for each event type
- Regular maintenance as schema standards evolve
- Constant monitoring to ensure accuracy
- Technical expertise to validate and update schema
- Complex integrations with ticketing systems
- Additional development costs for implementation and updates
Best practices for implementation
- Be Comprehensive: Include all relevant information for each schema type. More detail generally leads to better results.
- Stay Current: Keep your structured data updated, especially for:some text
- Event dates and times
- Ticket availability
- Price changes
- Performer updates
- Validate Your Data: Always test your structured data using Google's Rich Results Test tool before publishing.
- Maintain Consistency: Ensure your structured data matches the visible content on your page.
- Use Multiple Schema Types: Don't limit yourself to just event schemas. Include organisation, person, and venue information where relevant.
While other platforms require extensive development work and ongoing maintenance, Peppered handles all structured data for you. With these best practices as guidelines, Peppered automatically:
- Implements industry-specific schema for all your events out of the box
- Keeps up with evolving schema standards so you don't have to
- Maintains perfect schema accuracy through direct ticketing system integration
- Handles all technical validation and updates
- Includes this as standard – no extra development costs
How to implement event schema for your venue’s website?
Your website's code should include structured data in the <head> section. You should do this for event, ticket and location details (plus any other relevant information for your events).
This is the kind of complex implementation that venues typically need to manage. But with Peppered, you'll never need to worry about any of this—it's all handled automatically.
Here’s an example:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Event",
"name": "Swan Lake - Royal Ballet",
"startDate": "2025-02-15T19:30",
"doorTime": "2025-02-15T18:45",
"location": {
"@type": "Place",
"name": "Your Theatre Name",
"address": {
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "123 Theatre Street",
"addressLocality": "Manchester",
"postalCode": "M1 1AB"
}
},
"performer": {
"@type": "PerformingGroup",
"name": "Royal Ballet"
},
"offers": {
"@type": "Offer",
"price": "35.00",
"priceCurrency": "GBP",
"availability": "InStock",
"validFrom": "2025-01-15T10:00"
}
}
</script>
Common pitfalls to avoid
- Using a plugin: Auto-generating event schema sounds like it’d save you loads of time, without careful management and monitoring, it can generate incorrect details or have missing information.
- Incomplete Information: Missing crucial details like dates or prices
- Outdated Data: Not updating schema when event details change
- Incorrect Formatting: Using invalid schema markup
- Inconsistent Implementation: Not maintaining structured data across all relevant pages
- Mismatched Information: Schema data not matching visible page content
Remember, structured data is not just a technical SEO requirement—it's an opportunity to make your arts venue more visible and accessible to potential patrons. By implementing comprehensive schema markup, you're helping search engines understand and promote your content more effectively.
While structured data is crucial for SEO, it shouldn't consume your time and resources. With Peppered, you get all the benefits of perfect structured data implementation without any of the technical overhead. It's just one more way we help arts venues focus on what matters most—creating amazing experiences for their audiences.
Let's get this show on the road!
No matter what stage you're at in your search for the perfect web platform or digital marketing tool for your venue, we'll help you get the information you need to make the right decision.
- Want to see how Peppered works?
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