Brad Bartell

Why JSON-LD is Critical for Modern SEO: A Real-World Example from Modere

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Brad Bartell

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If you want your brand to stand out on Google, it’s no longer enough to simply rank high—you need to look great too. One of the most powerful (yet often overlooked) tools for enhancing your search appearance is JSON-LD structured data. During my time at Modere, I saw firsthand how implementing JSON-LD, particularly for product reviews, helped us turn basic listings into rich, eye-catching results. Here’s why JSON-LD matters—and how we used it to drive more visibility and credibility.

What is JSON-LD?

JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is a way to add machine-readable metadata to your web pages without disrupting the user experience. It tells Google—and other search engines—important information about your content: products, reviews, organization info, FAQs, and more.

Unlike older methods like Microdata or RDFa, JSON-LD is simple to implement and doesn’t require nesting tags within your HTML. Instead, it sits cleanly in the <head> (or sometimes <body>) of your page as a standalone block of code.

The Opportunity at Modere:

At Modere, we were already gathering thousands of authentic product reviews through Yotpo, a leading customer review platform. However, while these reviews were visible on the page, they weren’t showing up in Google’s search results as rich snippets (the star ratings you often see under a product link).

Without structured data, Google had no way to easily associate our reviews with our products—which meant we were missing out on valuable trust signals and click-through opportunities.

How We Solved It: Adding JSON-LD to Our Next.js Website

Working within a Next.js framework, we developed a process to dynamically inject JSON-LD into our product pages based on real Yotpo review data. Here’s how we approached it:

  • Pulled Yotpo data: On page load (or during server-side generation), we accessed the latest review counts and average ratings via Yotpo’s API.
  • Generated JSON-LD: For each product page, we created a JSON-LD schema following Google’s Product schema guidelines, including fields like name, description, aggregateRating, and review.
  • Injected it into the page: Using Next.js’ <Head> component, we embedded the JSON-LD inside a <script type=”application/ld+json”> tag.

Here’s a simple version of what we added:

import Head from 'next/head';

export default function ProductPage({ product, yotpoReviews }) {
  const jsonLd = {
    "@context": "https://schema.org/",
    "@type": "Product",
    "name": product.name,
    "description": product.description,
    "aggregateRating": {
      "@type": "AggregateRating",
      "ratingValue": yotpoReviews.average_score,
      "reviewCount": yotpoReviews.total_reviews
    }
  };

  return (
    <>
      <Head>
        <script
          type="application/ld+json"
          dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: JSON.stringify(jsonLd) }}
        />
      </Head>
      {/* Rest of product page */}
    </>
  );
}

The Results:

After Google re-crawled our pages:

  • Many Modere products started displaying review star ratings directly in search results.
  • Click-through rates improved, particularly on competitive products.
  • Customer trust increased before even landing on the site—because seeing those stars makes a strong first impression.

Why This Matters for Your Website:

Adding JSON-LD structured data isn’t just a “nice to have”—it’s becoming a necessity if you want your site to:

  • Earn rich snippets (stars, pricing, availability, FAQ dropdowns)
  • Improve click-through rates (CTR) from search results
  • Provide better context for AI models and voice search systems
  • Future-proof your SEO against evolving search engine expectations

If you’re running a modern site—whether it’s built on Next.js, WordPress, Shopify, or anything else—you should be leveraging JSON-LD. It’s one of the highest-ROI, lowest-friction ways to boost your search appearance and show customers (and Google) that your content deserves attention.

At Modere, this simple but strategic addition helped us bridge the gap between customer experiences and search engine visibility—and it’s something I recommend to every brand serious about their digital presence.

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