Someone told you your website "needs schema markup." Maybe it was an SEO audit tool flagging it in red, maybe a cold email offering to add it for a fee. You have no idea what it is, whether it matters, or whether you're missing out.

Here's the short version: schema markup is a small block of hidden code that tells Google the basic facts about your business in a format it can't misread. For most small businesses it takes an afternoon, it's usually handled by a setting you already have, and it won't move you up the rankings on its own. It's worth doing, as long as you know what it will and won't get you.

The quick answer

If you just want it done, do this:

Fill in every business field in your SEO plugin or site builder: business name, address, phone, opening hours, logo and website address. Most platforms turn those fields into schema markup for you.
Test your homepage with Google's free Rich Results Test and fix anything marked as an error.
Run the same page through the Schema Markup Validator to catch typos in markup types Google's test doesn't cover.
Check Google Search Console once a month for problems with your structured data.
Don't pay anyone to add review stars or FAQ markup to your own site. Google doesn't show either for a small business's own pages any more (details below).

The rest of this post explains each step, what you get for it, and the parts that are often oversold.

What schema markup actually is

Think about moving house. You have a stack of identical brown boxes. Box three could hold anything until you write "KITCHEN, FRAGILE" on the side. Then everyone helping knows what's inside without opening it.

Schema markup is that marker pen for your website. Google can read your homepage and guess that "(859) 555-0142" is probably a phone number and that the line under it is probably your address. Schema lets you label them outright: this is our business name, this is our address, these are our hours.

The labels come from Schema.org, a shared vocabulary that Google, Microsoft (Bing), Yahoo and Yandex all use, so you write it once and every major search engine understands it. You'll also hear the term structured data, which is the general name for information labeled this way. People use the two terms interchangeably.

What schema does and doesn't do for you

This is where most of the overselling happens, so it's worth being precise.

What it does: it makes your page eligible for rich results, the search listings with extras like a breadcrumb trail, product price and stock, event dates or recipe photos. Google publishes case studies where this paid off: Rotten Tomatoes measured a 25% higher click-through rate on pages with structured data. Those are big sites with big teams, so treat the number as "this can help", not as a forecast for yours.

What it doesn't do:

It doesn't boost your rankings by itself. Structured data helps Google understand and display a page. It isn't a ranking shortcut, and Google's own structured data policies say that even a penalty for bad markup only affects your rich results, not how the page ranks.
It doesn't guarantee anything shows up. In Google's words, structured data "enables a feature to be present, it does not guarantee that it will be present."
It doesn't control your Google Maps listing. The box with your hours, reviews and directions on Maps comes from your Google Business Profile. Schema on your website backs that up, but if your Maps listing is wrong, fix it in your profile first. Our Google Business Profile guide covers that.

What Google actually shows in 2026 (and what it stopped showing)

A lot of schema advice online is out of date. Here's where things stand as of October 2026, checked against Google's own changelog.

Review stars for your own business: not shown

If you add review markup to your own site hoping for gold stars under your listing, they won't appear. Google's review snippet rules say that when a business controls the reviews about itself, pages using LocalBusiness or Organization markup are ineligible for stars. That covers testimonials you paste onto your site and embedded Google or Facebook review widgets. Google introduced this rule in 2019. Stars are still possible for things like products you sell, but not for "reviews of us, on our own site." Google also added a rule in July 2026 against fake reviews and reviews given in exchange for a discount or freebie without clear disclosure.

FAQ dropdowns: gone

Google stopped showing FAQ rich results (the expandable questions under a listing) on May 7, 2026, and removed the documentation for them in June 2026. Since 2023 they had only appeared for well-known government and health sites anyway. FAQ markup won't hurt your site, and the questions on the page are still useful to visitors, but it won't change how you look in Google. If someone offers to "add FAQ schema for rich results", that offer is out of date.

HowTo steps: gone since 2023

Google retired HowTo rich results in 2023, first on mobile and then on desktop in September.

Breadcrumbs: desktop only

Breadcrumb markup still works, but since January 2025 Google shows breadcrumbs only on desktop results, not on mobile.

What's still worth having

For a typical small business, three types are worth having:

LocalBusiness (or a more specific type such as Plumber, Dentist or Restaurant): your name, address, phone, hours and website. Google's local business guide asks for the most specific type that fits, and only requires a name and address, though more accurate detail is better.
Organization: your official name, logo and social profiles, which can appear in knowledge panels.
Product, if you sell things online: price, availability and reviews from customers of the product.

How to add it on your platform

You almost certainly don't need to write code. Start with the settings your site already has.

WordPress with Yoast SEO

Go to Yoast SEO > Settings > Site representation, choose Organization, and fill in the name, logo and social profiles (Yoast's help page). The free plugin outputs Organization markup from that. Address, hours and LocalBusiness markup need Yoast's paid Local SEO add-on.

WordPress with Rank Math

Rank Math's free version has a Local SEO module that covers a single location: business type, name, logo, address, phone and opening hours (Rank Math's guide). Turn the module on, then fill in every field and pick the most specific business type in its list.

Wix

Wix creates LocalBusiness markup for your homepage automatically once you've entered your business name and location in your dashboard's Business Info settings (Wix help). Fill in everything there, including your logo and category. You can add custom markup in a page's SEO settings if you need more, but most businesses won't.

Squarespace

Squarespace generates some structured data on its own, and its business markup draws on the details in your site's Business Information settings. Fill those in completely. If you need something it doesn't produce, custom code can go in the site's Code Injection settings, though most small businesses won't need it.

Custom-built sites

If a developer looks after your site, they can add the markup by hand. Here's what a basic LocalBusiness block looks like for a fictional coffee shop:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "CafeOrCoffeeShop",
  "name": "The Daily Grind",
  "url": "https://www.example.com",
  "logo": "https://www.example.com/logo.png",
  "telephone": "+1-555-234-5678",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "412 Maple Avenue",
    "addressLocality": "Springfield",
    "addressRegion": "IL",
    "postalCode": "62704",
    "addressCountry": "US"
  },
  "openingHoursSpecification": [{
    "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
    "dayOfWeek": ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday"],
    "opens": "06:30",
    "closes": "18:00"
  }]
}
</script>

In plain English:

The <script type="application/ld+json"> line says "this is structured data, don't display it." JSON-LD is the format Google recommends, because it sits apart from the visible page and is easy to maintain.
@context names the Schema.org vocabulary, and @type says what this is: a coffee shop, which is a specific kind of LocalBusiness.
name, url, logo and telephone are what they say.
address is a small box inside the big one, with the street, city, state, ZIP and country as separate labels.
openingHoursSpecification gives the days and the opening and closing times, in 24-hour format.

Test it before you trust it

Broken markup is simply ignored, so you can't assume it worked. Check each important page:

Open the Rich Results Test, paste your page address and run it. It lists the structured data it found and flags errors. Errors need fixing; warnings about optional fields usually don't.
Run the same page through the Schema Markup Validator. It checks any Schema.org markup, including types Google no longer shows as rich results, so it's the better place to spot a mistyped address or a missing field.
Make sure the details match. The name, address, phone and hours in your markup should match your website's visible text and your Google Business Profile exactly.

Keep an eye on it in Search Console

Once your markup is live, Google Search Console watches it for you. Its rich result reports sit under Enhancements in the left-hand menu (product markup is under Shopping), and they only appear once Google finds markup for a type it reports on, such as Breadcrumbs, Review snippets or Products. There's no report for LocalBusiness or Organization, so for those, the Rich Results Test is your check.

Look at it monthly, or whenever you change themes, plugins or site builders. Those changes are when markup quietly breaks or gets duplicated.

Keeping it accurate

Update it when your details change. New hours, a move or a new phone number means updating the plugin or builder settings too, not just the page text.
Don't mark up things that aren't on the page. Google's policies say markup must describe what visitors can actually see. Hidden or misleading markup can lose you rich results.
Watch for duplicates. A theme, an SEO plugin and a reviews plugin can each add their own business markup. If the Rich Results Test shows two different LocalBusiness entries, turn one off.

Schema works best on top of solid basics: clear title tags, useful pages and good on-page SEO. It labels what's there; it can't make up for what isn't.

When to get help

Fill in the fields and run the tests yourself first. It's worth getting someone in if:

the Rich Results Test shows errors you can't trace back to a setting
you have several locations, or a custom site with no plugin to fill in
you sell products online and your product listings show errors in Search Console's Shopping reports

If that's you, we look after this as part of our SEO and marketing work.

Does My Small Business Website Need Schema Markup? What to Actually Do