Local service businesses, retailers, practices, venues, and franchises with public service details.
LocalBusiness schema helps search engines and AI systems read the facts you already show.
Structured data is a plain label for your business facts, services, locations, proof, and contact path.
LocalBusiness schema is JSON-LD that labels your business name, category, URL, phone, address or service area, hours, services, and other public facts. It helps search engines and AI systems avoid confusion. It does not replace what people see on the page. The safe rule is simple: mark up accurate facts that a person can also see on the page.
You want to know what schema to add and what to avoid.
Read the guide, open the matching tool, then send the survey if you want the page, schema, or workflow rebuilt properly.
Schema supports facts. It does not invent trust.
If a page says little, schema cannot fix it. Add structured data after the page clearly states the service, area, phone, proof, and next step. Then the code and the page back each other up.
- Keep name, address, phone, URL, and service areas consistent.
- Use Service nodes for real services, not every keyword variation.
- Use full URLs in schema and keep them matched to your canonical pages.
Every marked-up claim should be visible or directly supported.
Do not mark up reviews, prices, services, hours, or locations that a visitor cannot verify. Mismatched markup can cause trust problems and validation errors.
- Put the business facts in visible copy near the footer, contact area, or service page.
- Keep hours and phone numbers synced with live listings.
- Do not use schema to hide keyword-heavy content.
Structured facts make summaries less wrong.
AI search can describe a business poorly when the page is vague. Schema gives systems cleaner labels, but the visible page still does most of the work: clear headings, short descriptions, proof, and useful answers.
- Pair LocalBusiness schema with clear local service pages.
- Add Article or WebPage schema to educational resources.
- Use ImageObject or VideoObject when media carries real context.
The order that usually works.
Start with the step closest to revenue. Skip anything that does not make the business easier to find, understand, trust, or contact.
Confirm the business facts
Name, category, service area, URL, phone, and hours should match the website and listings before you write markup.
Choose the narrowest accurate type
Use a specific LocalBusiness subtype when it fits. If not, use LocalBusiness and describe services clearly.
Mark up the page that owns the fact
Put homepage-level business facts on the homepage. Put service-specific facts on the service page.
Validate before publishing
Run the JSON-LD through a validator and check that the page visibly supports the same claims.
What better looks like.
Good SEO and CRO usually feel less complicated after the fix: fewer vague claims, clearer proof, better routing, and less guessing.
| Area | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Weak schema | A business name and logo only. | Name, category, URL, phone, area served, services, and sameAs profiles when verified. |
| Risky schema | Claims that are not visible on the page. | Facts that match visible copy and live business listings. |
| Better entity clarity | Assistant guesses what the business does. | The page and markup describe the same services in the same words. |
Tools and related guides.
These links keep the topic cluster useful: one guide for context, one tool for action, and one survey path when the work needs to be rebuilt.
Questions that come up first.
Short, visible answers for readers and answer engines. No hidden tricks, no ranking guarantees.
No schema can guarantee rankings. It helps search systems understand facts. Rankings still depend on relevance, usefulness, trust, local signals, competition, and page quality.
Usually no. Put full LocalBusiness markup where it belongs, often the homepage or contact page. Service pages can use WebPage, Service, BreadcrumbList, and relevant media schema.
It can help systems understand the business more clearly, but recommendations depend on many signals: page quality, reviews, mentions, relevance, availability, and user intent.
Build my local schema.
Send us your site and the problem this guide matched. We will check the page, search visibility, schema, lead path, and creative, then reply with the first fixes worth making.