Local SEO
Local Schema Markup
Small, cheap, and one of the few places where a mismatch actively works against you rather than simply doing nothing.
Local business schema tells search engines your name, address, phone, hours and coordinates in a format they parse directly. The Nexclick implements it at template level, matching your Google Business Profile exactly, because schema disagreeing with the profile is worse than no schema at all.
Is this you?
What usually prompts the call
- Your website says one thing about your address and hours, and your Google profile says another.
- You have no structured data at all, or a plugin is injecting something nobody has inspected.
- You have several locations and the same schema is repeated identically on every page.
- Search Console reports structured data errors on your location pages.
What we do
The actual deliverables
Things that appear on an invoice, not adjectives.
- Match to the profile exactly first
- Name, address, phone, hours and coordinates taken from your verified Google Business Profile rather than retyped. Disagreement between schema and profile creates entity ambiguity.
- Correct type selection
- LocalBusiness has dozens of subtypes — Dentist, Plumber, Restaurant, LegalService. The specific subtype carries more information than the generic parent and is routinely left generic.
- Per-location markup on multi-site businesses
- Each location page carrying its own address, hours, phone and coordinates. Repeating head office details across every branch page is a common and self-defeating error.
- Geo-coordinates from the verified listing
- Taken from the profile rather than approximated from a postcode. Coordinates that disagree with the listing point at a slightly different place, which helps nobody.
- Opening hours including special hours
- openingHoursSpecification covering regular hours and holiday exceptions, kept in step with the profile rather than set once and forgotten.
- Entity graph connections
- LocalBusiness connected to Organization, sameAs pointing at your verified profiles, so search engines and AI systems resolve you as one entity rather than several.
- Validation across every template
- Rich Results Test and Schema.org validator on each template rather than one sample page, since errors cluster in templates.
Comparison
Local schema properties: which actually earn their place
Plugins emit a great deal of LocalBusiness markup, much of it doing nothing. These are the properties worth including, and the ones commonly added for no benefit.
| Property | Include? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| @type (specific subtype) | Essential | Dentist or Plumber carries more meaning than LocalBusiness |
| name | Essential | Must match the profile exactly, including Ltd or its absence |
| address (PostalAddress) | Essential | Core entity signal; match the profile byte for byte |
| telephone | Essential | Match the profile; use the same format everywhere |
| geo (GeoCoordinates) | Yes | Take from the verified profile, never from a postcode lookup |
| openingHoursSpecification | Yes | Including holiday exceptions — and keep it current |
| url | Yes | Canonical site URL, or the location page on multi-site businesses |
| sameAs | Yes | Verified profiles only; links entity records together |
| image / logo | Yes | Supports knowledge panel presentation |
| priceRange | Optional | Vague by design; harmless, low value |
| areaServed | Yes for SABs | The main way a hidden-address business states coverage |
| aggregateRating | Only if genuine | First-party reviews shown on the page. Third-party ratings breach policy. |
| hasMap | Optional | Minor; points at the verified listing |
| founder, employee, award | No | Rarely used by anything; adds weight without benefit |
How it works
Step by step, with timeframes
Timeframes are typical rather than guaranteed, and they assume we get account access and approvals when we ask.
- 01Day 1–2
Establish the canonical facts
Pulled from the verified Google Business Profile, so schema, site and listing all originate from one source.
- 02Week 1
Audit what exists
Current markup, plugin conflicts and validation errors. Multiple sources emitting competing LocalBusiness blocks is common.
- 03Week 1–3
Implement and validate
Built at template level, validated on staging. Zero errors is the acceptance criterion.
- 04Week 3–8
Monitor
Search Console enhancement reports as pages are recrawled, with anything surfacing corrected within the engagement.
What you get
Reporting and ownership
- Validated LocalBusiness markup on every relevant template, with crawl evidence.
- A single canonical record of your business facts, shared with the citation and profile work.
- Per-location markup on multi-site businesses, not a repeated head office block.
- Documentation so your developers can extend it when new location pages are built.
- Search Console enhancement monitoring for the first month after deployment.
Tools and platforms
- Google Rich Results Test
- Schema.org validator
- Google Search Console
- Google Business Profile (source of truth)
- Screaming Frog (structured data extraction)
Timeline
How long this actually takes
One to three weeks including validation. Effects are indirect and modest — local schema does not produce a visible rich result on its own and is not a ranking factor. What it does is reduce ambiguity about who and where you are, which supports the knowledge panel, helps AI systems resolve your entity correctly, and reinforces the consistency signal that citations and the profile also feed. It is cheap, quick and worth doing, and any agency presenting it as a significant ranking lever is overstating it substantially.
Pricing model
Fixed-price project
Fixed price, scaled by number of locations and templates. Frequently bundled with a NAP consistency audit, since both work from the same canonical record.
Questions
Local Schema Markup questions
Will local schema get us into the map pack?
No. Map pack position is decided by your Google Business Profile, proximity, prominence and relevance — not by markup on your website. Schema supports entity understanding and consistency. Anyone presenting it as a route into the local pack is misrepresenting what it does.
What happens if our schema and profile disagree?
It creates ambiguity about which details are correct, and ambiguity is exactly what consistency signals exist to remove. A mismatch is genuinely worse than having no schema, which is why we take the values from the verified profile rather than retyping them.
Which LocalBusiness subtype should we use?
The most specific one that fits. Schema.org has subtypes for most trades and professions, and a specific type carries more information than the generic parent. Where nothing fits properly, use LocalBusiness rather than forcing an inaccurate subtype.
Can we mark up our Google reviews on the website?
No. Marking up third-party reviews as your own aggregateRating breaches Google’s policy and can trigger a manual action. Reviews must be first-party and displayed on the page carrying the markup. This is one of the most commonly breached rules in local schema.
Do we need schema on every page or just contact and location pages?
LocalBusiness belongs on the pages representing a location — home, contact and each location page. Repeating it on every blog post adds nothing. On multi-location sites, each location page should carry its own details rather than the head office block.
Our plugin already adds schema. Is that enough?
Sometimes. The common problems are a generic type where a specific one exists, missing coordinates, hours that no longer match the profile, and two plugins emitting competing blocks. We usually correct what the plugin emits rather than replacing it, which is quicker and cheaper.
Last reviewed 28 July 2026.
Tell us what you are trying to fix
A 20-minute call, no pitch deck. The Nexclick will tell you what we would do, roughly what it costs, and whether we are the right people for it.