Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Listing multiple schema Things (e.g. Organization, LocalBusiness, Telephone, Locations, Place, etc)
-
Greetings All,
My law office features many pages with what are essentially directory listings (names, addresses, and phone numbers of places, agencies, organizations that clients might find helpful).
Am I correct in assuming that using schema for each of these listings might cause confusion for search engines? In other words, are search engines looking for schema on pages or sites to tell them only about the company running that page or site, or do search engines appreciate schema markup to tell them about all the pieces of content on the pages or that site?
-
Everett,
Thank you. Very much appreciate the detail. Will definitely check out JSON-LD.
-
Hello Micromano,
See this thread on Stack Exchange. You can mark up your organization, as well as any organization (or other "entity") that you describe / discuss on your website. Marking up an organization doesn't mean you are necessarily affiliated with them UNLESS you use the "SameAs" tag to connect that data with your own website, wiki page or social profiles...
Also, you may want to look into using JSON-LD instead. You would still base it on the Schema.org hierarchies, but the code is slightly different. The cool thing about JSON is that you don't have to show all of the data you're marking up. It can just be in the source code and not visible on the page, similar to meta descriptions as far as that aspect goes.
Here's what I would do.
1. Put Organization Schema for YOUR business (or your client's) in the HTML header of EVERY page using JSON-LD. Here's a generator I like. Also check out the JSON-LD Playground for testing your code. Don't forget the SameAs tags pointing to other sites/pages that you can verify as "official". This includes Wikipedia pages, Wiki Data pages and social profiles.2. Also surround information about YOUR business (logo, NAP...) with traditional Schema.org Organization markup.
3. Use traditional Schema.org Organization markup for the business listings, and include a SameAs tag around a link to their official websites.
Here's a good Stack Overflow thread to check out: Mixing Together Schemas.
-
Thanks for all the responses! Much appreciated.
-
In general schema.org markup helps search engines understand the content within the context better. So when you makup data it helps SE's understand you pages better. I would go for the schema.org markup in json-ld to be flexible in how the you show the marked-up data in your content. So to answer your question I would go ahead and mark-it-up (but make sure you do it the right way). Good luck.
-
No, it won't create any confusion for SEs if you are using the schema in proper manner like mentioned here, as per my opinion Structured data is a great idea to display your business in SEs, and it is definitely appreciated by SEs. This is also a good article about Schema https://blog.kissmetrics.com/get-started-using-schema/
Hope it helps
-
I've been wondering about this too. I may be wrong, but I feel as if it's contextual. For example, on many event listing websites they use event schema. Which will mark up the event details as well as the organiser details. This uses schema for the organiser and venue's business addresses, phone numbers and website, etc. This is the correct way of marking up events and the rich snippets display correctly on Google. As long as the NAP is under Organization or whatever (which lists the business' name) and you make it clear that it isn't your organisation, I assume it's fine.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO Best Practice for Managing a Businesses NAP with Multiple Addresses
I have a client with multiple business addresses - 3 across 3 states, from an SEO perspective what would be the best approach for displaying a NAP on the website? So far I've read that its best: to get 3 GMB account to point to 3 location pages & use a local phone number as opposed to a 1300 number. Display all 3 locations in the footer, run of site
Local Website Optimization | | jasongmcmahon1 -
How does Google read multiple Geo Shape Schema Mark Up?
Hi Guys, I posted a question recently about "Can I have multiple areaServed mark up on one domain?" and the responses I got was no. My client work predominantly in the South East of England in specific towns, so I wanted to be able to list all the areas they service. However, after being told no, I went ahead anyway and put in multiple areaServed markup on the page to see if this generates any errors and it isn't when I run it through the Structured Data Testing Tool. I don't get any errors by doing this, so hurray! But... What I want to understand (which I can't find the answer anywhere), is if this is okay, and how will Google read my markup? Will Google see that we are in multiple areas across the SE of England and push my content up before other sites, or is this just going to confused Google? By putting in all these areas into the website as multiple locations, will Google identify that person X in area Y fits the areaServed mark up I've added and push my content to them? Overall... has anyone else used multiple areaServed markup and can validate that this works? hHpEyQf
Local Website Optimization | | Virginia-Girtz1 -
Can I use Schema zip code markup that includes multiple zip codes but no actual address?
The company doesn't have physical locations but offers services in multiple cities and states across the US. We want to develop a better hyperlocal SEO strategy and implement schema but the only address information available is zip codes, names of cities and state. Can we omit the actual street address in the formatting but add multiple zipcodes?
Local Website Optimization | | hristina-m0 -
Applying NAP Local Schema Markup to a Virtual Location: spamming or not?
I have a client that has multiple virtual locations to show website visitors where they provide delivery services. These are individual pages that include unique phone numbers, zip codes, city & state. However there is no address (this is just a service area). We wanted to apply schematic markup to these landing pages. Our development team successfully applied schema to the phone, state, city, etc. However for just the address property they said VIRTUAL LOCATION. This checked out fine on the Google structured data testing tool. Our question is this; can just having VIRTUAL LOCATION for the address property be construed as spamming? This landing page is providing pertinent information for the end user. However since there is no brick and mortar address I'm trying to determine if having VIRTUAL LOCATION as the value could be frowned upon by Google. Any insight would be very helpful. Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | RosemaryB1 -
Multiple Websites for a Large Home Service Company
I have a client who offers multiple services, the current website is already huge because they have added on so many new offerings in the last year and want everything above the fold. As I am building out the sitemap for a re-design, they continue to add more services. (HVAC, Plumbing, Solar, Windows, Electrical) I am working on a sitemap for a re-build, but I am still well over 100 pages deep with huge menu's. **My question is what are the SEO pros/cons of breaking the site up into multiple websites? **
Local Website Optimization | | Lauren_E2 -
Schema markup for a local directory listing and Web Site name
Howdy there! Two schema related questions here Schema markup for local directory We have a page that lists multiple location information on a single page as a directory type listing. Each listing has a link to another page that contains more in depth information about that location. We have seen markups using Schema Local Business markup for each location listed on the directory page. Examples: http://www.yellowpages.com/metairie-la/gold-buyers http://yellowpages.superpages.com/listings.jsp?CS=L&MCBP=true&C=plumber%2C+dallas+tx Both of these validate using the Google testing tool, but what is strange is that the yellowpages.com example puts the URL to the profile page for a given location as the "name" in the schema for the local business, superpages.com uses the actual name of the location. Other sites such as Yelp etc have no markup for a location at all on a directory type page. We want to stay with schema and leaning towards the superpages option. Any opinions on the best route to go with this? Schema markup for logo and social profiles vs website name. If you read the article for schema markup for your logo and social profiles, it recommends/shows using the @type of Organization in the schema markup https://developers.google.com/structured-data/customize/social-profiles If you then click down the left column on that page to "Show your name in search results" it recommends/shows using the @type of WebSite in the schema markup. https://developers.google.com/structured-data/site-name We want to have the markup for the logo, social profiles and website name. Do we just need to repeat the schema for the @website name in addition to what we have for @organization (two sets of markup?). Our concern is that in both we are referencing the same home page and in one case on the page we are saying we are an organization and in another a website. Does this matter? Will Google be ok with the logo and social profile markup if we use the @website designation? Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | HeaHea0 -
Same blog, multiple languages. Got SEO concerns.
Hi, My company runs a small blog in swedish. Most of the visitors are our customers/prospects. We will write about generic concepts regarding our business and the occasional company news story. However, I have quite a few ideas for articles that could be interesting to a lot of people, and I'm tempted to write those in english for better exposure. I would love it if that exposure could boost my companies authority. How should I go on about this? Can I somehow tell search engines that a certain part or page of the site is in another language? Should I translate our entire site to english and post the english post in a separate blog feed? Any insight is welcome. Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | Mest0 -
Local Business Schema Markup on every page?
Hello, I have two questions..if someone could shed some light on the topic, I would be so very grateful! 1. I am still making my way through how schema is employed, and as I can tell, it is much more specific (and therefore relevant) in its details than using the data highlighter tool. Is this true? 2. Most of my clients' sites have a footer with the local business info included on every page of their site (address and phone). This said, I have been using the structured data markup helper to add local business schema to home page, and then including the footer markup in the footer file so that every page benefits from the local business markup. Is this incorrect to use it for every page? Also, I noticed that by just using the footer markup for the rest of the pages in the site, I am missing data that was included when I manually went through the index page (i.e. image, url, name of business). Could someone tell me if it is advisable and worth it to manually markup every page for the local business schema or if that should just be used for certain pages such as location, contact us, and/or index? Any tips or help would be greatly appreciated!!! Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | lfrazer0