What Is Structured Data? Schema Markup Explained for Small Business
Google Can Read Your Site. Schema Helps It Understand.
Google's crawlers can read the text on your website, but they don't inherently understand that "John's Plumbing" is a business, that "$75" is your service call price, or that "4.8 stars from 127 reviews" is a customer rating. Structured data (schema markup) explicitly tells Google what everything means.
Why It Matters for Rankings
Websites with proper schema markup are eligible for rich results — enhanced search listings that show star ratings, prices, FAQ dropdowns, business hours, and more. Rich results get significantly higher click-through rates than plain blue links because they take up more space and provide more information.
While Google says structured data isn't a direct ranking factor, the increased click-through rate from rich results signals to Google that your listing is relevant, which indirectly improves rankings.
The Schema Types That Matter Most
LocalBusiness: Your business name, address, phone number, hours, service area, and price range. This is essential for any business serving a local area.
Service: Individual services you offer with descriptions and pricing. Helps Google match your business to service-specific searches.
FAQPage: Frequently asked questions and answers. These can appear as expandable dropdowns directly in search results, taking up massive screen real estate.
Article/BlogPosting: For blog posts and content pages. Helps Google understand your content's topic, publish date, and author.
BreadcrumbList: Shows your site's navigation hierarchy in search results (Home > Services > Web Design). Helps users understand your site structure before clicking.
How to Implement Schema
Schema markup is added to your website's HTML using JSON-LD format — a block of JavaScript in the <head> section of each page. It's invisible to visitors but readable by search engines.
You can test your implementation with Google's Rich Results Test. Paste your URL and it shows which schemas Google detects and whether they qualify for rich results.
Every website we build includes comprehensive schema markup — LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage, and Article schemas where applicable. It's part of our technical SEO foundation, not an add-on.
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