Schema Markup

Schema markup is metadata embedded in a page's HTML — typically as JSON-LD — that declares "this page is an article" or "this is a product review" or "this is a FAQ."

It looks like this in the page source:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "name": "Schema Markup",
  "description": "Structured data added to a page..."
}
</script>

Why it matters for AEO

LLMs read schema markup directly. A page with @type: FAQPage is much more likely to have its Q&A pairs extracted by ChatGPT than a page with the same content as plain prose. Same for Article, Product, Recipe, HowTo.

The Cloudflare AI Gateway logs show this empirically: pages with clean JSON-LD show up in AI engine citation lists 2-3× more often than equivalent un-marked-up pages.

Common types worth adding

BCited's content briefs include a schema_types field listing the right types for each page. Add those, validate with Google's Rich Results Test, ship.