The schema markup guide

Short answer. Put Organization (or a LocalBusiness subtype such as Dentist or Restaurant) on your home or contact page, Service on each service page, Article on guides, BreadcrumbList on every page and Person on team profiles. Write it as JSON-LD, test it in the Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator, and keep it to facts a visitor can see on the page. Do not add FAQPage or HowTo expecting a rich result: Google stopped showing both. Never mark up your own reviews. Details and sources below.

What schema markup is, and what it is not

Schema markup is structured data: a block of code that labels the facts on a page using the shared vocabulary at Schema.org. A human reads "Open Monday to Friday, 9 to 6" in your footer. A crawler reads openingHoursSpecification with opens and closes values and does not have to guess.

Google’s own guidelines list three formats and mark one as JSON-LD (recommended); Microdata and RDFa are also accepted. JSON-LD sits in a single script tag, separate from your HTML, which is why it is easier to generate, maintain and test. Everything in this guide uses it.

Two things schema will not do. It will not lift a page’s ranking on its own: Google’s introduction to structured data describes it as a way to understand page content and enable search features, not as a ranking lever, and neither we nor anyone else should promise otherwise. And it will not rescue a slow site or a thin page. Treat it as hygiene that makes an already good page easier to understand.

The same guidelines carry two rules that decide whether your markup helps or harms. First, do not mark up content that is not visible to readers of the page. Second, do not mark up irrelevant or misleading content, with fake reviews given as the example. A page with a structured data issue can receive a manual action; Google says that action removes rich-result eligibility rather than changing the page’s ranking in web search, but it is still a Search Console red flag you will have to clear.

The types that matter for a London business

Most London service businesses need five or six types, not fifty. The table lists the ones we add for clients and for this site, where each one goes and what Google’s documentation says it can do.

Choosing the subtype matters more than people expect. A Brixton estate agent is a RealEstateAgent, not a generic LocalBusiness; a Soho restaurant is a Restaurant, which unlocks menu and cuisine properties; a Hatton Garden jeweller is a JewelryStore. The Schema.org LocalBusiness page lists the subtypes. Google’s guidance is to use the most specific one that fits, and to give several as an array when a business is genuinely two things.

Get your free SEO auditA person checks your structured data along with the rest of your site and sends you the three fixes that matter within two working days. Three fields, no call required.

The two types that stopped paying their way

Older guides (and many agency proposals) still sell FAQ and How-to markup as quick wins. Both features are gone.

The review rule catches a lot of London businesses. A Shoreditch restaurant that copies "4.8 from 312 reviews" from its Google Business Profile into its own site markup is marking up reviews it controls the display of. Google says that makes the page ineligible for the star feature, and the structured data policy above says misleading markup can bring a manual action. Our own code of ethics rules it out for every client, and this site carries no rating markup at all for the same reason.

Worked example: a dental practice in Clapham

Here is how we would mark up a single-site dental practice on Clapham High Street. Every value comes from something a visitor can see on the page or verify in the real world, and every value matches the practice’s Google Business Profile, whose guidelines say the name should reflect your business’s real-world name as used on the storefront and stationery. If the signage says "Clapham Smile Dental", the markup, the footer and the profile all say "Clapham Smile Dental", not "Best Dentist Clapham SW4".

A practice with a second site in Balham gets a second LocalBusiness node on its own location page. Google’s guidance is to define each location as its own LocalBusiness, and to use the department property only for a department inside one building that keeps different hours or a different phone number. That is also how the Google Business Profile should be set up: one profile per location, which our Google Business Profile service handles alongside the markup, and which our local SEO work depends on.

Service, Article and Person: the connective tissue

The LocalBusiness or Organization node is the hub. The other types point back to it with an @id, so Google sees one entity rather than a dozen unconnected blocks. On this site every page carries the same Organization identifier, and Service.provider, Article.publisher and Person.worksFor all reference it. That is the single most useful habit in this guide.

Service

name ("EICR testing"), serviceType, description, url, provider (the Organization @id) and areaServed as Place values ("London", or the boroughs you actually cover). A Croydon electrician with twelve service pages gets twelve Service nodes, each on its own page, none claiming an area the business does not serve.

Article

headline, description, datePublished, dateModified, image, author and publisher. Google’s Article documentation shows images supplied in 16x9, 4x3 and 1x1 crops and asks for author.name with an author.url where one exists. The author must be the person who wrote or reviewed the piece. Guides on this site are authored by the organisation unless a named person actually wrote them.

Person

name, jobTitle, image, worksFor (the Organization @id) and sameAs for a LinkedIn profile. Put it on team and author pages, never on pages about people who do not work for you. Our team page is built this way.

BreadcrumbList

An itemListElement array of ListItem values with position, name and item URL, matching the visible breadcrumb trail. Every page below the home page gets one.

Adding it on the platforms London businesses actually use

The custom-build row is the pattern we recommend wherever it is possible: generate the markup from the same record that produces the visible page, so a change to opening hours changes the footer and the JSON-LD together. This site works that way; one business-facts file feeds the footer, the contact page and every schema block. If you run WordPress or Shopify, the practical equivalent is to let one plugin own the markup, switch the others off and audit the output rather than assuming it.

Testing, and keeping it honest

Two testers, two jobs. The Rich Results Test tells you whether a page is eligible for Google’s rich results and flags errors in the types Google uses. The Schema Markup Validator checks the markup against the Schema.org vocabulary itself, which catches mistakes in types Google does not show, such as Service. Run both on a live URL, not just on pasted code, because plugins and tag managers change what ships.

After launch, Search Console’s enhancement reports list the pages with valid, warned and errored items for each eligible type, so a broken deployment shows up within days. Pair that with a quarterly check of the pages that carry LocalBusiness, because hours, phone numbers and names change and the markup rarely gets told.

• Every value in the markup appears on the page a visitor sees.
• One Organization node per site, referenced by @id from every Service, Article and Person.
• The business name matches the signage, the footer and the Google Business Profile exactly.
• No Review or AggregateRating markup about your own business, anywhere.
• No FAQPage or HowTo added in the hope of a rich result; keep FAQPage only where it describes the page honestly.
• Both validators pass on the live URL on desktop and mobile.
• A named person owns the quarterly check.

What to do next

If your site has no structured data, start with Organization or your LocalBusiness subtype and BreadcrumbList this week; they take an afternoon. Add Service to your service pages and Article to your guides next. Then stop. More markup is not better markup, and every block you add is one more thing that has to stay true.

If you would like a second pair of eyes, the free SEO audit includes a structured data check as part of the technical pass, written by a person, with the three fixes that matter most. Structured data is also part of our technical SEO service and sits inside every SEO engagement from the first month. Not ready to talk? Score your own site in five minutes.