Schema Markup

When Google crawls a page, it reads the visible text the way a person does and guesses at the rest. Schema markup is a small block of code in the page that hands Google the answer directly. It says this is a local business, here is the address, here are the hours, here is the price range, here is the phone number.

Schema does not change anything a visitor sees. It changes what Google sees, and increasingly, what Google can show in the search results. Rich results, knowledge panels, FAQ accordions on the search page, and the eligibility signals for the map pack all lean on schema.

Most small businesses only need a handful of schema types, applied to the right pages. The high-value ones are usually:

Most off-the-shelf website builders ship with generic schema, if any. A Wix or Squarespace site might emit a WebSite object and nothing else. That is a missed opportunity. The local business signals that help Google understand your geographic relevance, hours, services, and reviews simply are not on the page.

On MBI sites, schema is built in at the template level. Every page that should have a local business object, a breadcrumb, or an FAQ schema gets one, with the address and contact details kept in sync with the Google Business Profile.

Google offers a free Rich Results Test that takes any URL and reports back what valid structured data it found and what was missing. Drop your home page into the tool and you will see what Google sees. If the LocalBusiness panel is empty, that is a real problem with a real ranking cost.