Instead of treating schema as a layer added after the writing, we can use it during planning to see what a complete page ought to contain.
In a recent article What SEOs Get Wrong About AI Search on the Orbit Media Studios blog, author Andy Crestodina makes a point which is ignored in a lot of SEO advice. Yes, schema markup can help machines understand a page. Yes, it is often worth having. But adding schema to a weak page is not worth the effort.
Too much schema advice is framed as a retrofit. Publish the page, audit it later, find a suitable schema type, wrap the existing content in JSON-LD, validate it, then tick the box and move on. By introducing it in the way I have over the past couple of days, I may have implied that’s what we all need to do.
However, if the page is thin, vague or half-finished, schema does not solve the real problem. It simply labels it more clearly.
That is where Crestodina’s idea becomes genuinely useful. Instead of treating schema as a technical layer added after the writing is done, we can use it during planning to see what a complete page ought to contain. In that sense, schema becomes less of a markup exercise and more of an editorial prompt.
Schema = completeness
Take a service page. If the relevant schema properties point us toward service type, area served, credentials, expertise, reviews or related entities, that is not just a list of tags. It is a list of possible content gaps. It is a hint that the page may not yet explain enough. It may not say where the service applies, why the company is qualified, how the offer differs, or what evidence supports the claims.
Seen like that, schema is not really about code at all. It is about completeness. Machines do not only need labels. They need substance. If we add structured data to thin content, we are making a weak page more legible, but not more informative.
The better approach is to let schema inform the brief. Before a page is written, or while it is being improved, we can look at the most relevant schema types and ask what they imply a good page should cover. Not because we want to satisfy a validator. Because we want to publish something more useful.
And that is the part worth remembering. Schema can help search engines and Ai systems interpret a page, but only after we have given them something worth understanding.