Schema Markup for Local Business | Plain English Guide

Schema markup gets talked about as some kind of SEO secret weapon, which puts a lot of small business owners off before they've even understood what it does. In reality, it's just a standardised label added to your page's code that tells search engines exactly what they're looking at. Here's what it actually is, which types genuinely matter for a local business, and what it can and can't do for you.

What structured data actually is

Structured data — also called schema markup — is a block of code added to a page that describes its content in a format search engines can read unambiguously. Without it, Google has to infer what a page is about from the visible text, which it's generally good at but not perfect. With it, you're stating directly: this is a local business, here's its name, address and opening hours; this is an article, here's the author and publish date; this is a set of frequently asked questions, here they are.

It doesn't change what a visitor sees on the page at all — it's invisible to a normal browser and exists purely for machines reading the underlying code.

JSON-LD vs microdata

There are a couple of technical formats for writing structured data. Microdata embeds the markup as attributes directly inside your existing HTML tags, which can get messy and is easy to break when a page is edited. JSON-LD is a separate block of structured data placed anywhere in the page, usually the head, that describes the page's content without touching the HTML around it at all.

Google has recommended JSON-LD as the preferred format for years, and it's what we use on every site we build. It's easier to generate correctly, easier to validate, and far less likely to break by accident when someone edits the page later.

The schema types a local business actually needs

There are hundreds of schema types defined at schema.org, and the vast majority are irrelevant to a small local business. In practice, a handful cover almost everything worth doing:

LocalBusiness (or a more specific subtype like Plumber, Electrician or Restaurant) — your name, address, phone number, opening hours and service area
Organization — a broader description of the business, often used alongside LocalBusiness for the parent brand
WebSite — identifies the site itself and can enable a sitelinks search box in results
BreadcrumbList — describes the navigation path to a page, which often shows as a breadcrumb trail in search results instead of a raw URL
FAQPage — marks up a genuine question-and-answer section, like the one at the end of this article
Article — used on blog posts and guides, describing the author, publish date and headline

Beyond that list, most other schema types (Product, Recipe, Event and so on) are only worth adding if they genuinely describe something on the page — there's no benefit to adding schema for content that doesn't exist.

What schema does and doesn't do for rankings

This is the point worth being honest about: schema markup is not a direct ranking factor. Adding it to a page that has thin, generic content will not push that page above better-written competitors.

What it does do is help search engines understand your content with more confidence, and it can unlock richer search listings — star ratings, FAQ dropdowns, breadcrumb trails instead of plain URLs — which tend to improve click-through rate even at the same ranking position. Better local SEO tends to come from the fundamentals covered in our guide to ranking on Google Maps and our Google Business Profile guide, with schema markup as a useful supporting layer rather than the main event.

Review markup: the rules most businesses get wrong

Star ratings shown directly in a search listing are one of the most requested schema features, and one of the most misunderstood. Google only permits review or rating markup for reviews genuinely collected and displayed on your own website — for example, testimonials your customers submitted directly to you and that appear on the page.

Marking up Google reviews you don't host yourself, or fabricating aggregate ratings, breaches Google's guidelines directly and can trigger a manual action against the whole site. If you want star ratings to appear, the honest route is building a genuine reviews section on your own site with schema attached to it — not attempting to replicate your Google listing's stars elsewhere.

How to test whether your schema actually works

Google's Rich Results Test lets you paste in a URL or a block of code and see exactly which schema types it detects, along with any errors or warnings. It's the fastest way to check markup is valid before assuming it's working.

Search Console's Enhancements reports (found under sections like "Breadcrumbs" or "FAQ") show which schema types Google has actually detected and indexed across your whole site over time, and will flag pages with errors that need fixing. It's worth checking this every few months, particularly after a site redesign — schema markup is easy to accidentally strip out during a rebuild if nobody's specifically checking for it.

Where schema fits into the wider picture

Structured data is also becoming more relevant as AI-driven search results become more common — the clearer and more explicit your content is about what it's describing, the easier it is for both traditional search and AI summaries to use it accurately. We cover that shift in more detail in our guide to AI Overviews and AI search.

As part of our SEO service, we add the relevant schema types as standard on every local business site we build, alongside the content and technical fundamentals that actually move rankings.

Common questions

What is schema markup?

It's a standardised block of machine-readable data added to a page — usually as JSON-LD in the page source — that tells search engines exactly what the page describes: a business, an article, a product, a set of FAQs.

Does schema markup improve rankings?

Not directly. It helps search engines understand and trust your content, and it can earn richer search listings, which tends to improve click-through rate. The ranking benefit is indirect but real.

Which schema types does a local business need?

LocalBusiness (or a more specific subtype), Organization, WebSite, BreadcrumbList, and FAQPage on any page with a genuine questions section. Anything beyond that is usually optional.

Can I add review stars to my search listing with schema?

Only for reviews collected and displayed on your own site, and Google is strict about it. Marking up Google reviews you don't host yourself breaches the guidelines and can trigger a manual action.

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Schema Markup for Local Businesses, Explained in Plain English