If you run a business with a physical location or a service area, local business schema is one of the highest-leverage pieces of structured data you can add. It tells search engines exactly who you are, where you are, when you are open and how to reach you, feeding the local results, map packs and knowledge panels that local customers rely on. This guide explains what it is, the properties that matter, and how to add it correctly.
What local business schema is
Local business schema is structured data (typically JSON-LD) using Schema.org’s LocalBusiness type, or a more specific subtype like Restaurant, Dentist or Store. It describes your business in machine-readable form: name, address, phone, hours, geo-coordinates, price range and more. Adding it to your site helps Google connect your website to your real-world business and understand the details that power local search features.
The properties that matter
A few properties do most of the work:
| Property | What it provides |
|---|---|
| name, address, telephone | Your NAP, the core of local SEO |
| openingHours | When you are open, can show in results |
| geo (latitude/longitude) | Precise location for maps |
| priceRange | Rough cost signal (e.g. $$) |
| url, sameAs | Your site and social/profile links |
The most important is a consistent NAP, name, address, phone, that exactly matches your Google Business Profile and other listings.
Why NAP consistency is everything
Local ranking depends heavily on Google trusting that your business is real and consistent across the web. If your address or phone number appears one way in your schema, another way in your Business Profile, and a third way in a directory, that inconsistency erodes trust and can hurt your local visibility. So the golden rule of local business schema is: make the NAP in your markup identical, down to the formatting, to your Google Business Profile and your on-page contact details. Structured data amplifies consistency; it cannot fix contradiction.
How it helps local SEO
Local business schema supports several local-search outcomes. It helps Google confidently associate your website with your physical business, which underpins map-pack and local-pack eligibility. It can enable enhanced details in your listing, like hours. And it feeds the knowledge panel that appears when someone searches your business name. None of this replaces a well-optimised Google Business Profile, that remains central, but the schema reinforces it and helps other search engines and AI assistants understand your business too.
Service-area and multi-location businesses
Two common situations need care. If you serve customers at their location rather than yours, a plumber, a mobile detailer, you can use areaServed to describe your service area instead of publishing a storefront address you do not have. If you have multiple locations, each location should have its own page with its own LocalBusiness markup and its own NAP, rather than one page trying to represent them all; this mirrors how Google wants multi-location businesses structured and keeps each location’s data clean. Getting this right matters because a service-area business that publishes a fake storefront address, or a chain that lumps all branches onto one page, sends confusing signals that undercut the very local visibility the schema is meant to build.
Generate and validate your markup
Writing LocalBusiness JSON-LD by hand, with nested address and geo objects, is fiddly and easy to get wrong. Our free local business schema generator builds valid markup from your business details, name, address, phone, hours, price range, ready to paste into your homepage or contact page. Then check it parses cleanly with our schema validator. For the bigger picture on structured data, see our guide to what schema markup is.
The takeaway
Local business schema tells search engines who and where your business is, reinforcing the local results, map packs and knowledge panels local customers use. The properties that matter most are a consistent NAP plus hours, geo and price range, and the single biggest rule is that your markup must exactly match your Google Business Profile and on-page details. Generate valid markup with our local business schema generator, validate it with the schema validator, and explore the rest of our free SEO tools.