Schema Markup for Local Businesses, Explained
Telling search engines directly, instead of hoping they guess correctly.
Local SEO · 8 August 2026 · 2 min read
Written by the Biztour team - Google Trusted Photographers since 2013.
Schema markup, sometimes called structured data, is a standardised way of embedding machine-readable facts directly into a webpage: this is the business name, this is the address, these are the opening hours, this is a review. Instead of a search engine trying to infer these from page text, it reads them directly, with much less room for error.
Every page on this site carries this kind of markup, which is a reasonable, checkable example of what it actually looks like in practice.
- Structured data tells search engines facts directly, rather than requiring inference from page text
- LocalBusiness schema covers name, address, phone, hours; FAQPage schema covers question and answer content
- It's what earns certain rich results (star ratings, FAQ dropdowns) directly in search results
- It's invisible to a normal visitor, present only in the page's underlying code
What it actually solves
Without structured data, a search engine has to guess your opening hours from a sentence somewhere on the page, which is unreliable and easy to get wrong at scale. LocalBusiness schema states it directly and unambiguously, alongside your address, phone number and other core facts, in a format search engines are built to read with certainty.
Where it shows up in results
FAQPage schema is what allows an expandable FAQ dropdown to appear directly in a search result, extra visible space that a competitor without it doesn't get. Review-related schema can contribute to star ratings appearing in search results too, though Google is selective about which sites qualify for this specific display.
It's genuinely invisible to visitors
None of this appears anywhere a normal visitor would see it, it lives entirely in the page's underlying code, read by search engines and other automated systems, not rendered on the page itself. Its entire value is in what it communicates behind the scenes, not in anything a human browsing the site would notice.
Questions people ask
Do we need a developer to add schema markup?
Generally yes, for a proper, error-free implementation, since incorrect structured data can cause more harm than none at all if it contradicts what's actually on the page.
Does adding schema markup guarantee a rich result in search?
No, it makes you eligible for certain rich results, FAQ dropdowns, star ratings, but Google decides case by case whether to actually display them, based on quality and relevance signals beyond the markup itself.
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