July 29, 2025
Page Structure and Structured Data: SEO Fundamentals That Matter in 2025
AI Overviews now appear in about 13% of all search results, zero-click searches continue climbing, and new search features launch regularly. But here’s what many are missing—AI systems don’t operate in a vacuum. AI needs clear, well-structured content to understand what to feature and when.
At Epic Notion, this insight shapes our approach.
While others focus exclusively on chasing the newest trends, we’re building on the fundamentals that have always worked—and that work even better in today’s AI-driven search environment. Two principles stand out as more critical than ever: clear page structure and comprehensive structured data implementation.
Why Page Structure Matters More in the AI Era
Google’s AI systems need to understand your content to feature it in AI Overviews, voice search results, and other enhanced search experiences. Research shows that 78% of AI Overviews contain lists (bullet points or numbered lists), and content with clear headings and subheadings appears more frequently.
This isn’t a coincidence. AI systems excel at parsing well-organized content because clear structure provides the context they need to understand relationships between ideas, identify key information, and determine relevance to user queries.
The Three Pillars of AI-Friendly Page Structure
1. Hierarchical Content Organization
Your content should follow a logical hierarchy that both users and AI can easily navigate. Pages should be accessible within two or three clicks from the homepage, and your content should flow from broad concepts to specific details using proper heading tags (H1, H2, H3).
Take this very blog post as an example. We start with an H1 title, followed by H2 sections that break down the main concepts (“Why Page Structure Matters More in the AI Era,” “Structured Data is a Competitive Advantage”). Within each section, we use H3 subheadings like “The Three Pillars of AI-Friendly Page Structure” to create clear content clusters that AI systems can easily parse and understand.
When AI systems encounter well-structured content like this, they can better understand which information is most important, how topics relate to each other, and what specific questions your content answers. The clear hierarchy tells AI: “This is the main topic, these are the supporting concepts, and here are specific actionable insights.”
2. Strategic Internal Linking
Internal links do more than help users navigate—they create a web of context that AI systems use to understand your site’s topical authority and content relationships. Internal linking helps distribute “link juice” throughout your site, improving the ranking potential of all linked pages.
For example, this post about page structure and structured data naturally connects to our previous posts on FAQ Schema and Local Business Schema. These internal links tell AI systems that Epic Notion has comprehensive coverage of structured data topics, establishing us as a topical authority in this space.
Your internal linking strategy should connect related content using descriptive anchor text that includes relevant keywords. Instead of generic “click here” links, use phrases like “learn more about FAQ Schema implementation” or “discover Local Business Schema best practices.” This helps AI systems understand not just what pages exist, but how they relate to each other and what topics you have comprehensive coverage on.
3. Clean URL Structure
Your URLs should reflect your content hierarchy and include relevant keywords. A URL such as “example.com/services/lasik” immediately tells users and search engines they’re looking at LASIK services, while “example.com/products/custom-wallpaper-printing” shows they’re viewing custom wallpaper printing services. This clarity becomes even more important as voice search and mobile browsing continue to dominate user behavior.
This blog post follows the same principle. Rather than a generic URL like “epicnotion.com/blog/post-123,” it uses a descriptive structure that reflects both the content hierarchy (/blog/) and the specific topic. The URL immediately tells both users and AI systems what this page covers, making it more likely to appear for relevant queries about page structure and structured data.
Structured Data is a Competitive Advantage in AI Search
As of 2024, more than 45 million web domains have implemented schema.org structured data, representing about 12.4% of all registered domains. That means nearly 88% of websites are missing out on a fundamental way to communicate with search engines and AI systems.
This represents a massive opportunity. If competitors ignore structured data, implementing it correctly gives you a significant advantage in how AI systems understand and feature your content.
How Structured Data Powers AI Discovery
The structured data landscape has undergone significant transformation in 2024, driven by the rise of AI-powered search, the growing importance of machine-readable content, and the need to ground large language models in factual data.
When you implement structured data, you’re essentially providing AI systems with a clear, standardized way to understand your content. Instead of having to interpret your content from scratch, AI can immediately identify key entities, relationships, and facts.
Think of structured data as providing a “cheat sheet” for AI systems. When Google’s AI encounters a page with proper Article schema, it instantly knows the publication date, author, headline, and main content body. When it finds LocalBusiness schema, it immediately understands the business name, address, hours, and services offered. This clarity helps AI systems make better decisions about when and how to feature your content.
Where to Start Implementing Your Strategy
Audit Your Current Page Structure
Start by examining your site’s navigation depth. Users should not have to click more than 3 times from the home page to get to the site’s most important pages. If they do, you have a structure problem that’s hurting both user experience and search performance.
Use tools like Screaming Frog to crawl your site and identify:
- Pages buried too deep in your site hierarchy
- Orphaned content with no internal links
- Broken internal linking patterns
- URLs that don’t reflect your content organization
Implement Core Structured Data Types
Don’t try to implement every possible schema type at once. Focus on these high-impact fundamentals below first.
- Organization schema on your homepage with your logo, social profiles, and contact information. This establishes your business entity in search engines’ knowledge graphs.
- LocalBusiness schema if you have physical locations, including hours, services, and geo-coordinates. Essential for appearing in local search results and Google Maps.
- Article or BlogPosting schema for your content with author information, publish dates, and headlines. This helps AI systems understand content freshness and authorship.
- Product schema for ecommerce with ratings, prices, availability, and reviews. Crucial for appearing in product-related searches and shopping results.
- BreadcrumbList schema to clarify your site navigation structure. This helps both users and AI understand where they are on your site.
Each schema type serves a specific purpose in helping AI systems categorize and understand your content. Start with the schemas most relevant to your business model, then expand your implementation over time.
Test and Monitor Performance
Always validate your structured data implementation using Google’s Rich Results Test tool and Schema.org’s Schema Markup Validator. Monitor your progress through Google Search Console, tracking improvements in:
- Rich result appearances
- Click-through rates from search results
- Overall organic traffic and engagement metrics
How Epic Notion Approaches Page Structure and Structured Data
Our SEO strategy focuses on creating comprehensive, interconnected content ecosystems rather than just optimizing individual pages. We build clear content hierarchies that establish topical authority while implementing structured data that helps AI systems understand the relationships between different pieces of content.
This approach recognizes a fundamental truth: AI has certainly disrupted search, but it hasn’t changed the fact that search engines and AI systems need to understand your content to feature it effectively. Clear page structure and comprehensive structured data implementation remain the most reliable ways to ensure your content is discoverable, understandable, and actionable for both users and AI systems.
For our clients, this means:
- Strategic content planning that considers both user journey and AI discoverability
- Structured data implementation across all content types and business entities
- Ongoing optimization based on performance data and evolving search features
The results speak for themselves. While other agencies chase the latest trends, our Charlotte digital marketing team helps clients maintain strong search visibility and user engagement because we focus on the fundamentals that consistently deliver results.
Ready to learn more? Contact Epic Notion at 704-817-3765 or fill out our contact form. In today’s AI-driven search landscape, the businesses that focus on clear communication—to both humans and machines—will be the ones that thrive.
