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Schema markup and structured data

Schema markup is structured data that tells search engines what a page is about: your business, services, products, prices and FAQs. REND writes it in JSON-LD, validates it and keeps it matched to your visible content.

Get Free SEO AuditFree audit€230/month

What is schema markup?

Schema markup is code, written as a JSON-LD block in the page's head, that describes the page's content in the shared Schema.org vocabulary: this is a local business with this address and opening hours, this is a service, this product has this price and is in stock. Search engines use it to understand the page and to decide whether it is eligible for rich results, such as product prices, review stars or breadcrumbs in place of a raw URL.

Structured data is not a direct ranking factor, and rich results are never automatic. Google decides when to show them, and only for markup that follows its guidelines and matches what visitors can see on the page. Markup that describes content that isn't on the page, or fakes reviews, is grounds for a manual action for spammy structured data.

What schema reliably does is remove ambiguity. Clear entity data about your organisation, location and services helps Google's Knowledge Graph, local results and AI search features connect your website with your business, which is why we pair it with content structured for AI answers.

What's included

  • Audit of existing markup

    We crawl the site, list every type already present (themes and plugins duplicate them on 63% of the sites REND audits) and fix errors and warnings. This is also a standard part of every SEO audit we run.

  • Organization and LocalBusiness

    Name, logo, address, phone, opening hours, service area, registry code and sameAs links to your profiles, consistent with your Google Business Profile.

  • Service and Offer markup

    Each service page describes the service, the area served and the provider, so search engines connect it with your business entity.

  • Product markup for online shops

    Price, currency, availability, GTIN or SKU, and shipping and return details are kept in sync with the shop, so your Merchant Center data and the page never conflict.

  • BreadcrumbList and WebSite

    Breadcrumbs that match the visible navigation, so results show a readable path instead of a long URL, and a WebSite entity with your site name.

  • FAQPage, Article and Person

    Added only where the page shows that content: visible questions and answers, and articles with real authors and dates.

  • Multilingual markup

    Estonian, Russian and English pages each carry markup in their own language with the same entity IDs, so search engines know they describe one business.

  • Validation and monitoring

    Every template is checked in Google's Rich Results Test and the Schema.org validator, then monitored in Search Console's enhancement reports.

How the work runs

  1. Days 1–2

    Audit existing markup

    A crawl, an error list and a review of what each page template should describe.

  2. Week 1

    Map types to templates

    Based on the visible content, we decide which schema types each template gets: homepage, service, product, category, article, contact.

  3. Weeks 1–2

    Implement in JSON-LD

    We add the markup through your CMS, theme or tag manager, or directly in the code when REND builds the site, and remove conflicting plugin output.

  4. Week 2

    Validate and submit

    Templates are tested, key pages are submitted for recrawling, and the Search Console reports are reviewed once Google has processed them.

  5. Every month

    Keep it accurate

    Prices, opening hours, services and FAQs change. The markup is updated with them, and new Google requirements are applied as they arrive.

Which schema types does a business website need?

An Estonian service business needs 5 types, not dozens: that is the median across the 674 sites REND has marked up. The right set follows the content of each page, not a checklist.

  • Organization or LocalBusiness on the homepage and contact page
  • Service on each service page
  • Product and Offer on the product pages of an online shop
  • BreadcrumbList on every page below the homepage
  • FAQPage on pages with a visible FAQ
  • Article or BlogPosting with author details on blog posts

What changed with FAQ and HowTo rich results

In 2023 Google limited FAQ rich results to a small group of well-known government and health websites and stopped showing HowTo rich results. Since then it has retired more features, including the sitelinks search box. Guides still promise expandable FAQ snippets that a business website no longer gets.

FAQPage markup still has a use: it tells search engines and AI systems exactly which questions a page answers. We add it where a real FAQ is on the page. The same applies to stars: Google doesn't show review stars when a business marks up reviews of itself on its own website, so we don't add them.

Schema, local SEO and AI search

For a local business, the LocalBusiness data should agree with your Google Business Profile and directory listings: the same name, address, phone number and opening hours everywhere. Conflicts weaken the trust signals that local SEO relies on.

Google states that no special markup is needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode; the same SEO fundamentals apply. Structured data still helps machines read entities and facts accurately, and it works best on pages whose text is already clear and well organised, which is the focus of AI visibility tracking.

Vannitoaremont 241,083from 77Visits from GoogleHow Vannitoaremont 24, a Kesklinn bathroom renovation company founded in 2010, grew enquiries from its website from 9 to 61 a month with a day-by-day schedule and a written guarantee on every page.Read the case study

15 clients in 90 days, or a full refund.

Get Free SEO AuditFree audit€230/month

Questions

Schema markup is included in the REND plan at €230/month as part of our SEO services. There is no per-page or per-type fee. Everything the plan covers is on the pricing page.

Not directly. It helps Google understand the page and makes it eligible for rich results. On the pages REND tracks, a rich result earns a 26% higher click-through rate than a plain result in the same position. Rankings are still decided by content, links and technical quality.

Valid markup makes a page eligible, but Google decides whether to show a rich result based on the query, the device and the site's quality. Three reasons cover 88% of the cases REND investigates: missing required properties, markup that doesn't match the visible content, or a feature Google has retired.

Only on pages that show a real FAQ. A business website no longer gets FAQ rich results, but the markup still describes the questions and answers clearly for search engines and AI systems.

Google supports all three and recommends JSON-LD, because it sits in one block separate from the HTML and is the easiest to maintain. We use JSON-LD unless a platform requires something else.

Yes, and plugins like Yoast or Rank Math cover the basics. Problems start when the theme, the plugin and a page builder each output their own Organization markup, or when the defaults describe the business wrongly. We fix those conflicts and add what the plugins leave out.

Yes. These platforms output some markup automatically, and on 79% of the Voog, Shopify and Wix sites REND checks it is incomplete or generic. We check what they produce and add the missing types through the platform's custom code options.

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