Structured data is a small block of code, written in a format called JSON-LD and placed in a page's source, that states facts about the page in a way search engines read directly rather than inferring from the text. LocalBusiness is the schema type built for a business that serves customers in a place: its name, location, hours, contact details, and category.

This covers what to put in a LocalBusiness block, how to keep it honest and consistent, and what it does and does not do for your visibility. It is the local-business companion to the broader entity SEO guide and the AI-focused structured data for AI search piece.

What LocalBusiness schema is

LocalBusiness is a schema.org type that describes a physical or service-area business. It has more specific subtypes for particular trades, such as Plumber, Electrician, HVACBusiness, RoofingContractor, and Locksmith. Using the most specific subtype that fits is slightly better than the generic LocalBusiness, because it states your category more precisely.

The block sits inside a script tag with the type "application/ld+json" in the page source. It does not change how the page looks. It gives search engines a clean, unambiguous statement of who the business is, which supports how they identify you as an entity and how confidently they connect your website to your Business Profile.

When it is appropriate, and when it is not

  • Appropriate: on the homepage or contact page of a business that serves a local area, and on individual location pages for a multi-location business. One primary LocalBusiness entity per location.
  • Not appropriate: on every page of the site. A blog post does not need a LocalBusiness block. Repeating the full business markup site-wide adds noise, not signal.
  • Not a substitute for a claimed, complete Google Business Profile. The profile is where local ranking is decided. Schema supports the website's role, which is a smaller part.

The properties that matter

A useful LocalBusiness block includes:

  • name: your exact business name, matching your Business Profile and citations.
  • address: a full postal address for a business customers visit. A service-area business that hides its address should omit the street address and use areaServed instead.
  • telephone: the same number shown on the page and on your profile.
  • url: your canonical homepage.
  • geo: latitude and longitude, for a business with a real location.
  • openingHoursSpecification: your actual hours.
  • areaServed: the cities or regions you cover, especially important for a service-area business.
  • sameAs: links to your official profiles: Google Business Profile, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp, industry directories. This is how you tie the entity together across the web.
  • priceRange, image, description: optional, useful where accurate.

Leave out anything you cannot state accurately. Empty or guessed values are worse than an absent property.

Consistency with visible content and your profile

The single rule that matters most: the structured data must agree with what a person sees on the page, and with your Google Business Profile.

  • The name, address, and phone in the schema must match the name, address, and phone printed on the page and listed on your profile, character for character where it counts.
  • Hours in the schema must match the hours shown to visitors.
  • Do not mark up information that is not visible on the page. Structured data describes the page; it is not a place to add claims the page does not make.

Inconsistency here does the opposite of what schema is for: instead of clarifying your identity, it introduces a conflict. NAP consistency and local citations cover the same principle across the rest of the web.

Location and service relationships

Schema can express how parts of your business connect, which helps search engines model you accurately:

  • Services: each service page can carry Service schema naming that offering and pointing back to your LocalBusiness as the provider. This links the specific service to the entity.
  • Departments or locations: a multi-location business can express each location as its own LocalBusiness, related to a parent Organization.
  • areaServed on services: a service offered only in certain areas can say so.

The goal is a coherent graph: one Organization, its locations as LocalBusiness entities, and its services as Service entities linked to those. Entity SEO for local businesses covers the wider identity picture this supports.

Multi-location markup

For a business with several locations:

  • Each location page gets its own LocalBusiness block with that location's name, address, phone, geo-coordinates, and hours.
  • An Organization block, typically on the homepage, represents the brand as a whole and links to each location.
  • Do not put every location's markup on every page. Each location page describes its own location.
  • The schema for each location must match that location's Business Profile and its visible page content.

Multi-location local SEO covers the wider architecture this fits into.

What structured data cannot do

  • It does not directly rank you. Schema helps search engines understand a page; it is not a ranking factor you can turn up.
  • It does not guarantee rich results. Google decides when to show enhanced listings, and eligibility is not the same as display.
  • It does not fix thin content. A page with nothing to say does not improve because it has clean markup.
  • It cannot carry claims the page does not make. Review and rating markup, in particular, must reflect genuine reviews collected and shown on your own site, and self-serving review markup without that basis is against Google's guidelines. When in doubt, leave ratings out of your site schema and let your Business Profile carry them.

Implementing and validating it

  1. Start with the homepage: Organization plus a LocalBusiness block, or a single combined entity for a one-location business.
  2. Add Service schema to each service page, and LocalBusiness to each location page.
  3. Use a generator or a platform plugin if you do not want to write JSON by hand. Most site platforms have one.
  4. Validate with Google's Rich Results Test and the Schema.org validator. Fix errors; review warnings.
  5. Re-check after any change to your address, phone, hours, or the page content the schema describes.

A local SEO audit includes checking that your schema is valid and matches your profile. To have yours reviewed, a free local visibility audit covers it.