What Is Structured Data (Schema) and How to Add It to a Business Site

Google understands the text on a page, but doesn't always interpret it correctly. Is the number starting with 0216 at the bottom of the page a phone number or an order code? Is 'Monday 09:00' an opening time or an event date? Structured data is a way of stating that information separately, in a form a machine can read without hesitation.

An analogy: your page is a freely written letter; structured data is the same information on a form with labelled boxes. The letter is fine for people. The form is much easier for machines.

What is structured data?

Structured data means labelling the information on a page using a shared vocabulary. That vocabulary is known as schema.org and started as a joint initiative of the major search engines. Statements like 'this is a business, its name is X, its address is Y, its phone number is Z, it's open at these hours' are written using standard field names.

There are three formats: JSON-LD, Microdata and RDFa. Google recommends JSON-LD, and in practice it is the most widely used. JSON-LD is a separate block added to the page code; visitors don't see it and it doesn't affect the design.

Why it matters for rich results and AI

The most visible benefit is rich results: star ratings in search results, product price and stock status, event dates, breadcrumbs. These can make your result stand out on a crowded page. Whether a rich result is shown is Google's decision.

It's worth being honest here. Structured data doesn't boost your rankings by itself; according to Google's own statements it isn't a direct ranking factor. Some rich result types have also been narrowed or removed over time. For example, FAQ rich results were largely limited to government and health sites, and HowTo results were removed; check Google's documentation for the current status. So the advice 'add FAQ schema and your questions will expand in search' no longer applies to most businesses.

Expectations on the AI side should be measured too. Adding schema won't make ChatGPT or Google's AI Overviews start recommending you. But having your business name, address, phone and social profiles machine-readable and consistent can make it easier for these systems to identify you correctly. We covered visibility in AI search in a separate article; structured data is one of the foundations there.

Core schema types for businesses

There are hundreds of types, but a small or medium business needs only a handful:

• Organization: for every site. Business name, logo, URL, contact details and social profiles.
• LocalBusiness and its subtypes: for businesses with a physical location. Where more specific types exist, such as Dentist, Restaurant, HairSalon or AutoRepair, use them.
• WebSite: the site's name and address.
• BreadcrumbList: the path showing where the page sits on the site.
• Product and Offer: price, currency and stock for e-commerce product pages.
• Article or BlogPosting: title, author and date for blog posts.
• FAQPage: for question and answer sections. Even without a rich result, it makes the content structure explicit.
• Event and Course: for event organisers and training centres. We also touched on Course schema in our article on course centres.

The basic rule fits in one sentence: only mark up information that is actually visible on the page and accurate.

JSON-LD examples

For a hair salon in Moda, Kadıköy, a LocalBusiness block consists of the fields below. Written as code, each line is a simple field name and value:

• @context: https://schema.org
• @type: HairSalon
• name: the salon's full name, exactly as on the sign and the Google profile
• address: of type PostalAddress; streetAddress (street and number), addressLocality (Kadıköy), addressRegion (İstanbul), postalCode, addressCountry (TR)
• telephone: in international format starting with +90
• openingHoursSpecification: opening and closing times day by day
• geo: latitude and longitude
• url and image: the site address and a photo of the salon
• sameAs: the Instagram account and other official profiles
• priceRange: the price level

The Organization block is shorter: name, url, logo, sameAs and contactPoint are enough. For a service business, this block usually sits on every page, while LocalBusiness typically appears on the homepage and contact page.

In FAQPage, each question goes under mainEntity as a Question, with its answer as an Answer inside acceptedAnswer. The text must match the visible question and answer exactly.

So who adds this block, and how? On WordPress, SEO plugins such as Yoast or Rank Math can generate schema such as Organization, WebSite, Article and Breadcrumb automatically; you need to fill in the business details in their settings. On custom-coded sites, schema is added to the page templates and updates itself as content changes. Adding it through Google Tag Manager is possible, but writing it directly into the page HTML on the server side is generally more reliable.

Testing and validation tools

Two free tools cover most of the work:

• Google Rich Results Test: shows which rich results your page is eligible for and any errors.
• Schema Markup Validator (validator.schema.org): general schema.org validation, not specific to Google.

After launch, watch the relevant reports in Search Console for a few weeks. Warnings about products, breadcrumbs or business information show up there. A one-time test isn't enough; a plugin update or theme change can break the schema.

Common mistakes

The most common problem we see is putting information in the schema that isn't on the page. Showing a high rating in the schema when the page has no reviews violates Google's guidelines and can lead to a manual action. False rating and review data also carries a risk of misleading promotion.

A related trap is a business using rating schema on its own site for reviews about itself. Google doesn't show these 'self-serving' reviews as star results for LocalBusiness and Organization, so it isn't worth the effort.

The rest are more mundane but common:

• An address or phone number in the schema that doesn't match the site or the Google profile.
• Two different Organization blocks on the same page because both the theme and a plugin generate schema.
• Prices or opening hours that changed while the schema kept the old data.
• Spending hours on rich result types that have been retired.

For a small business the starting point is simple: Organization or the right LocalBusiness type, plus schema for blog and product pages if you have them. Add the rest as the need arises. If you're wondering how to write FAQ sections that work for both visitors and AI, we covered that in a separate article.