Schema markup, or structured data, is code that tells search engines and AI unambiguously what is on a page: who the author is, which company it concerns and which service the page describes. It does not raise rankings by itself, but it reduces misunderstandings.
What schema does, and what it does not
Schema helps a machine connect things correctly: this person works at this company and wrote this article. In AI search that matters, because an answer is assembled from many sources.
Schema does not replace content. If the information is not visible on the page, it should not go into the schema.
The most important types for a service business
- Organization: the company’s name, logo, contact details and profiles elsewhere.
- Person: the expert’s name, title, employer and profiles.
- Service: what the service is and who provides it.
- Article: the author, publication date and update date.
- BreadcrumbList: the page’s place in the structure of the website.
One rule above the rest: match the visible content
Schema may contain only information a visitor can see on the page. Review stars without visible reviews, or questions that are not on the page, break Google’s guidelines and can lead to the markup being ignored altogether.
Connect things to each other
Individual pieces of markup are more useful when they refer to one another. The author of an article is the same Person described on the About page, and works at the Organization described on the homepage.
This is done with permanent identifiers (@id). A good SEO plugin handles much of it automatically.
In WordPress: let the plugin do the basics
Yoast SEO and similar plugins produce the basic structure ready-made. Fill in the company and person details in the plugin settings with care. Do not add the same information on top with another plugin, because overlapping markup confuses more than it helps.
Test before and after
Google’s Rich Results Test shows which markup a page has and whether it contains errors. The Schema.org validator checks the structure more generally. Run a test after every theme or plugin update.
Schema is part of technical SEO and GEO and AI search optimization. We cover the connections between pages in the internal linking guide and language versions in the multilingual SEO guide.