Structured data for a local business

What it is for

A person reading the contact page sees the address. A machine reading the same page sees text that might be an address. Structured data removes the doubt: it says, in a form Google documents, that this page describes a business with this name, at this address, with this phone and these hours. It is one of the ways the NAP is made consistent, and it is how the business tells Google which of the many mentions of its name across the web is the official one.

The one block

One JSON-LD block, in the head of every page, describing the business. Google's documentation, linked below, gives the type and the fields. Use LocalBusiness or, better, the most specific subtype that applies, Dentist, Plumber, Restaurant, LegalService and so on. Fill: name, the official URL, telephone, the address with locality, postal code and country, geo-coordinates from the map pin, opening hours, a short description, and the services offered. Give the block a stable identifier, the site's address followed by a fragment, so that other pages and other sites can point at it. Link the profile and the business's own social accounts in the sameAs field.

Values that match

Every value in the block matches the profile and the contact page character for character. This is the whole point. A structured data block that says “Murphy's Plumbing Ltd” under a page that says “Murphy Plumbing” has added a contradiction, not removed one.

What to leave out

Ratings and review counts about the business itself. Google's structured data policies say self-serving reviews and ratings on LocalBusiness and Organization types are not eligible for rich results and may be ignored; marking them up looks like an attempt to game the stars in the results. Awards you did not receive, obviously, and awards you did receive unless there is a page to link to. Keywords stuffed into the description. Anything that is not visible on the page.

Test it

Paste the page's address into Google's Rich Results Test and into the Schema Markup Validator. Fix errors; read warnings. Then check the page in Search Console's enhancements reports over the following weeks. A block with a syntax error is worse than none, because it is ignored and looks careless.

Where it goes on a multi-page site

The business block on every page, since every page is about the business. A service block on each service page, if the platform makes it easy. Article markup on any blog posts. Nothing else is needed for a local business, and the temptation to add FAQ markup for questions that are not on the page should be resisted; Google's guidelines require the marked-up content to be visible.

Illustrative example. A physiotherapy clinic adds a Physiotherapy-typed block with its address, hours, three services, its map coordinates and links to its profile and two social accounts, validates it, and finds a week later that Search Console recognises the business details. That describes the mechanism, not a ranking result.

Output

One validated block on every page, matching the profile, with self-serving ratings left out. Then make the pages point at each other properly: internal links.