Which structured data a small business needs

1{2  "@type": "Bakery",3  "name": "Adwoa’s Bakery",4  "url": "https://www.example.com",5  "address": { "addressLocality": "Accra" }6}

Structured data is a way of labelling what’s on a page, so search engines don’t have to guess. Your page says “Open Monday to Saturday, 7am to 7pm”. Structured data says the same thing in a form a machine can read without any doubt: these are the opening hours, for this business, at this address.

It’s often sold as a ranking trick. It isn’t one. Google doesn’t treat structured data as a general ranking boost. What it does is make your pages eligible for richer search results, like product prices or event dates, and help search engines connect the facts about your business correctly. For most small businesses, a handful of types covers everything.

What it looks like

The format Google recommends is JSON-LD: a block of code in the page that visitors never see.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Bakery",
  "name": "Adwoa's Bakery",
  "url": "https://www.example.com",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "12 Example Street",
    "addressLocality": "Accra",
    "addressCountry": "GH"
  },
  "openingHoursSpecification": {
    "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
    "dayOfWeek": ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday"],
    "opens": "07:00",
    "closes": "19:00"
  }
}

SEO plugins and many themes add some of this automatically. Usually the job isn’t adding more. It’s checking that what’s there is correct, complete and not duplicated.

The types worth having

Organization or LocalBusiness

Who you are: your name, logo, website, contact details, and your social profiles, listed under sameAs. If customers visit you at an address, use LocalBusiness or a more specific type such as Dentist, Restaurant or AutoRepair. It belongs on the homepage, or the About or Contact page.

It doesn’t replace a Google Business Profile, which is what actually drives map results for local searches. Keep your name, address and phone number identical in both.

WebSite

Tells Google the name of your site, which it can show in results instead of your bare domain. A small block on the homepage is enough.

BreadcrumbList

Describes where a page sits in your site, like Home › Services › Kitchen fitting. On desktop, Google can show this trail in place of a long web address, which is tidier and tells searchers what kind of page they’re about to open.

Article or BlogPosting

For blog posts and news: the headline, author, publish and update dates, and main image. It helps Google show the right date and picture for your articles.

Product, for shops

Name, image, price, currency, stock status and, if you collect them genuinely, reviews. This is what makes prices, availability and star ratings eligible to appear in results. WooCommerce outputs a basic version, so check it includes the price and availability for every product.

Event, for events

Dates, times, location and ticket details, if you run events that people search for.

What no longer helps

A lot of advice online is out of date:

• FAQ markup. Since 2023, Google only shows FAQ rich results for well-known, authoritative government and health websites. It won’t hurt your pages, but it won’t give most businesses the expanded listing it once did.
• HowTo markup. Google no longer shows HowTo rich results at all.
• Star ratings about yourself. Reviews a business collects about itself and marks up on its own site aren’t shown as stars for LocalBusiness or Organization pages. Stars in results come from genuine product reviews, or from review platforms and your Business Profile.

Rules that keep you out of trouble

• Only mark up what’s visible on the page. If the markup lists opening hours, the page should show the same hours. Markup describing things visitors can’t see can lead to a manual penalty from Google.
• Keep it accurate. Old prices, finished events and disconnected phone numbers in your markup are worse than none at all.
• Have one source of truth. If your theme, an SEO plugin and a reviews plugin each output their own Organization, search engines get three versions of the facts. Choose one, and switch the others off.

How to check yours

1. Google’s Rich Results Test shows which rich results a page is eligible for, and any errors that block them.
2. The Schema Markup Validator, at validator.schema.org, checks everything against the schema.org standard, including types Google doesn’t use for rich results.
3. Google Search Console has reports for the rich result types it has found on your site, such as breadcrumbs, products and events, with errors listed across every page.

The short version

For most small businesses: Organization or LocalBusiness and WebSite on the homepage, BreadcrumbList across the site, Article on the blog, and Product if you sell online. Keep it accurate, keep it in one place, and check it again after every redesign.

This website uses the same set: business, website, breadcrumb and article data. Checking structured data is part of every technical SEO audit we run.

What else an audit covers: what a technical SEO audit actually checks