Schema markup for a business website: which types matter
Schema markup tells Google what your pages are in a language it reads without guessing: a business, an article, a product, a service. Most business sites have none. Here are the four or five types that matter, what each earns you, and how to add them without a plugin doing it badly.
Google is good at guessing what a page is. Schema markup means it does not have to. It is a block of structured data in the page that says, in a format Google reads directly: this is a business, here is its name, address, hours and phone; this is an article, published on this date by this organisation; this is a product, at this price, in stock. Most business sites we scan have none. Adding it takes an afternoon.
What it earns you
Two things. Better understanding, which helps ranking and helps Google connect your site to your business profile and your brand. And rich results: the extra pieces in search listings such as star ratings, prices, event dates, breadcrumbs, and article details. Not every type triggers a visible enhancement, and Google decides when to show them. But a page with the right schema is eligible; a page without it is not.
The types that matter for a business site
Organization, or LocalBusiness if you serve a place. On the homepage. Name, logo, address, phone, opening hours, the social profiles that are really yours, and the areas you serve. LocalBusiness has subtypes, so a dentist is a Dentist and a restaurant is a Restaurant; pick the closest one. This is the one that ties everything together and it is the one we add to every site.
WebSite. Also on the homepage. Name and address of the site. Small, and it helps Google show the site name correctly.
Service. On each service page. What the service is, who provides it, where. It helps Google match the page to the search.
Article. On guides, posts, anything written. Headline, dates, author, publisher, image. This is what makes an article eligible for the article enhancements in results, and it is what our own guide pages use.
Product. On any product page, with price, currency, availability and, if you have them, real review ratings. This is the schema most likely to produce a visible enhancement, and it is required for shopping features.
BreadcrumbList. On deep pages, the path from the homepage. Google shows it in place of the raw address, which looks better and reads better.
FAQPage used to be worth adding everywhere; since 2023 Google shows FAQ enhancements only for a narrow set of sites, so add it only where it is genuinely a FAQ and expect nothing visible.
How to add it
The format is JSON-LD, a small script block in the page head. Three ways:
- Your platform or SEO plugin generates it. Most WordPress SEO plugins add Organization, WebSite, Article and Breadcrumb automatically and let you fill in the business details once. Check what they output; the defaults are often incomplete, with a missing logo or the wrong business type.
- Written into the templates, so every service page or article carries the right block automatically from its own content. This is what we do on custom builds and on our own site, because it stays correct as content changes.
- By hand on individual pages, which is fine for a homepage and a few key pages, and a maintenance problem beyond that.
Whatever the method, validate it. Google’s Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator both show what they read and what is wrong. Invalid schema is silently ignored, so a mistake means you have nothing, not a partial result.
What not to do
Mark up things that are not on the page. Fake ratings. Claim a LocalBusiness at an address you do not occupy. Google treats these as spam and can apply a manual action that costs you far more than the schema was ever going to earn.
Checking a site
Our scanner reports whether a page carries any JSON-LD schema and which types. If yours says none, the homepage Organization or LocalBusiness block is the place to start, and it is an hour of work with a large return in how well Google understands who you are.
See where your own site stands.
The scanner checks the things this guide talks about, in about ten seconds, no signup.
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