In more detail
Helping Google read your page properly
Google is good at reading web pages, but it still has to guess at some things. Is that number a phone number or a price? Is that line of text your opening hours or a special offer? Schema removes the guesswork. It is a standard way of labelling the important facts on a page so that search engines can read them with confidence.
The labels follow a shared vocabulary that the major search engines support. There are types for local businesses, services, products, articles, events, videos and much more. Each type has properties, so a local business can declare its name, address, phone number, opening hours and the area it serves.
Visitors never see any of this. It sits in the code behind the page. What people may see is the result. Schema can help your listing stand out in search results with extra details, such as star ratings, prices or event dates. Google decides when to show these enhancements, so schema makes them possible rather than certain.
The most important rule is honesty. Schema must describe what is genuinely on the page. Marking up reviews that are not shown, prices that do not exist or details that differ from your visible content breaks Google's guidelines and can mean your enhancements are removed.
It also needs to be on every page that deserves it, not just your homepage. Your contact page, each service page, each product and each article can carry the schema that suits it. Many sites add schema once when they launch and then forget about it, so new pages go without and old details fall out of date.
If you change your opening hours, phone number or prices, the schema should change too. Treat it as part of the page, not an afterthought, and Google will have a clear, accurate picture of your business.
