Most SEO professionals think they understand structured data. They don’t. Crawford Peterson discovered this during his architectural engineering background and early web development work with Casey Keith about programmatic content strategies. What started as a simple attempt to rank a medical client for olive leaf extract quickly revealed a fundamental gap in how we think about data organization. The example that changed everything? Beating major government health institutions and medical journals in England for competitive medical keywords – a result that seemed impossible until Crawford understood structured data fundamentals.

This episode breaks down the anatomy of that breakthrough. Structured data is the foundation. Schema is the enhancement layer. Semantic triples add the machine-readable precision that transforms search engine comprehension. Crawford explains how understanding these distinctions helps you build pages that rank without traditional SEO tactics, avoid over-reliance on tools, and create content that Google’s AI can actually process. By the end of this conversation, you’ll never look at website structure the same way again.

Recap & Takeaways

Structured Data vs. Schema: Not the Same Thing Structured data is your foundation, while schema is the enhancement layer. Crawford’s car analogy says it best: structured data is your tires (essential for function), schema is fancy rims (nice enhancement). Your content must rank on structured data alone before schema can help.

Content Structure Determines Google Comprehension Lexical organization using semantic triples (subject-predicate-object) and the 5 W’s creates machine-readable content. Google’s AI needs this structured approach to understand and rank your pages. Writing “like a book report” isn’t outdated—it’s essential.

Real-Time Data Integration Changes Everything Government APIs, Data Commons, and live data feeds transform static pages into dynamic, authoritative content. Every visitor sees fresh statistics, crime data, or industry metrics that keep pages current and valuable while citing credible sources Google recognizes.

E-commerce Structure Beats Traditional Service Pages Google prioritizes e-commerce in search results. Crawford’s breakthrough came from structuring services as products using WooCommerce (a trick her learned from Casey), creating hundreds of daily visitors for clients who never experienced that traffic before. Services become products with attributes, options, and structured entity relationships.

Match Your Industry, Don’t Outsmart It Google creates industry embeddings and expects content patterns. Being too unique or in-depth can hurt rankings if your outline doesn’t match industry standards. Sometimes “dumbing down” the structure while keeping quality content gets better results than revolutionary approaches.