Article Schema: A Practical Implementation Guide

Article schema (using the Article type, or the more specific NewsArticle / BlogPosting) tells search engines that a page is an article and supplies structured details — headline, author, dates, images. It is one of the highest-value, lowest-risk pieces of structured data for any content site.

What it does

It helps Google confidently understand authorship, freshness, and topic, and it underpins features like Top Stories and rich presentation in some contexts. Increasingly, it also helps AI systems extract and attribute your content cleanly.

Key properties

• headline — the article title (keep it accurate, under ~110 characters).
• author — a Person (or Organization) with a name and, ideally, a link to an author page.
• datePublished and dateModified — honest, accurate dates.
• image — a high-quality image (multiple aspect ratios are recommended).
• publisher — the Organization with a logo.

How to implement

1. Use JSON-LD in the page head — Google's preferred format.
2. Pick the right type: BlogPosting for blogs, NewsArticle for news, Article otherwise.
3. Match the markup to the visible page — never mark up data that is not on the page.
4. In WordPress, RankMath and Yoast output Article schema automatically — configure the type and author, do not hand-roll a duplicate.
5. Validate with Google's Rich Results Test and Schema.org validator.

Common mistakes

• Fake or inflated dateModified to look fresh.
• Author marked as the site name instead of a real person (weakens E-E-A-T).
• Markup that contradicts the visible content.

Related: Schema Markup FAQ