Schema markup: helping search engines understand your site

Search engines are good at reading pages, but they still have to guess at some things. Is this number a price or a phone number? Is this name the author or the company? Schema markup removes the guesswork by labelling your content in a standard format that Google, Bing and other search engines all understand.

What schema markup is

Schema markup is a type of structured data based on the vocabulary at schema.org. You add it to your page’s code, usually as a small block of JSON-LD, and visitors never see it. It describes what the page is about: a business with an address and opening hours, a product with a price and availability, an article with an author and a publication date.

Why it is worth adding

• Clarity: it helps search engines understand and categorise your pages correctly.
• Rich results: some types make pages eligible for enhanced search listings, such as product prices and stock, review stars or breadcrumb trails instead of plain URLs.
• Entity understanding: Organization markup helps connect your website, logo and social profiles as one business.

Schema markup is not a direct ranking boost, and eligibility is not a guarantee. Google decides when to show rich results. It has also narrowed some of them over time: FAQ rich results, for example, are now shown only for well-known government and health websites, and How-to rich results have been removed. Add markup because it describes your content accurately, not purely in hope of a special listing.

The types most business sites need

• Organization: your company name, logo, website and social profiles. Usually on the homepage.
• LocalBusiness (or a more specific type such as Dentist or RealEstateAgent): address, phone, opening hours and area served.
• Product: name, image, price, currency, availability and genuine reviews, for e-commerce.
• Article or BlogPosting: headline, author, publication and update dates, image.
• BreadcrumbList: the path to the page, which can replace the URL in search results.
• Event: for workshops, launches and webinars with dates and locations.

How to add it

Google recommends JSON-LD: a script block placed in the page that holds all the structured data in one place, separate from your HTML. A simple Organization example looks like this:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "name": "Example Studio",
  "url": "https://example.com",
  "logo": "https://example.com/logo.png",
  "email": "hello@example.com"
}
</script>

On WordPress, SEO plugins generate much of this automatically. On custom sites, developers usually build it into page templates so every product or article gets correct markup from its own data.

Rules to follow

• Mark up only what visitors can see. Structured data must match the visible content. Adding reviews, prices or FAQs that are not on the page breaks Google’s guidelines.
• Keep it accurate and current. Update prices, stock and opening hours when they change.
• Use the most specific type that fits.
• Do not mark up self-written reviews of your own business as ratings.

How to test

Paste a URL into Google’s Rich Results Test to see which rich result types the page is eligible for and whether there are errors. The Schema Markup Validator at validator.schema.org checks any schema.org markup more generally. After launch, the Enhancements section of Search Console reports problems across your whole site.