Helping local businesses to get found online!
The Schema.org community is responsible for creating and maintaining schemas for structured data on the internet. People from all different companies work together to help improve the way the internet works by creating standards and promoting industry-wide adoption of their schemas across web pages, email messages, and more. Schema.org aims to increase search engine findability and make life easier for people building websites and applications.
It is a form of structured data that was created by the major search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and Yandex) to help them better understand the content on web pages. There are many different types of schemas supported by Schema.org, including books, movies, music albums & events, products, recipes and more.
Let's understand it in detail.
A Local Business Schema is a schema markup that uses specific tags to help search engines display the right information about your business more easily.
It is important to use the Local Business Schema to get your site listed on Google Maps and any other location-based searches.
How does it work?
The Local Business Schema Generator from Merkle|RKG allows you to generate a JSON-LD script for your website that includes the key items required for inclusion in Google's Local Knowledge Panel. This generator creates the markup necessary for your local business listing (hCard) and integrates it into your existing website code (jQuery).
To get started, simply enter the name of your business and its physical location, then click "Generate." This will create a JSON-LD script that can be placed anywhere on your web pages.
Business owners and marketers, are you taking advantage of Schema.org Structured Data markup for your Local Business?
Local Business markup allows you to provide specific information about your business that search engines can use to display more accurate and relevant results for users. So, basically, it will enable you to describe your business so that search engines can better understand through structured data. This includes things like opening hours, addresses, phone numbers and more.
For example:
This will help search engines display more relevant results when someone searches for your business name or types in a specific query like "Plumber in Richmond VA" or "Best Plumber" and so on.
Steps to generate schema markup for your local business?
The following steps will help you set up schema.org markup using an existing listing on a local directory or create a new listing for your own local business.
Fill out the stated details like Name, URL, Business, etc.
Option to choose between a Physical Address or a P.O. Box Address.
After filling out the details, click on the 'Copy to Clipboard' icon.
Paste the copied text where you want to display the address.