Checking if a website has schema markup at all

Checking if a website has schema markup is one of the quickest items on a local SEO audit, and one of the least visible. Schema markup, or structured data, is a block of code in the page that tells search engines in a fixed format what the page is about: this is a plumber, this is the address, these are the opening hours. Visitors never see it. That is exactly why so many small business sites have none, and why it is worth a look before you email one.

What schema markup actually is

Schema markup uses a shared vocabulary from schema.org. On a local business site it is usually written as JSON-LD, a small script in the page source that lists facts in a structured way. A page about a dentist in Harrogate might declare a business type, a name, a telephone number, a postal address and a set of opening hours. A search engine can read those facts directly instead of guessing them from the surrounding text.

It helps to be straight about what it does not do. Schema markup is not a switch that lifts a site up the results, and adding it does not guarantee any special display in Google. What it does is remove ambiguity, and it is a precondition for some of the richer result formats. For a small business site it is a sensible piece of tidiness, not a miracle, and that is how it should be pitched.

How to check in two minutes

You do not need to be able to read code. There are two routes, and the second is the more reliable.

1. Open the page, view the source, and search for application/ld+json. If it appears, there is JSON-LD in the page. If it does not, look for the words schema.org, which can indicate older markup written directly into the HTML.
2. Paste the page address into Google's Rich Results Test or the Schema Markup Validator at validator.schema.org. Both list what they find and flag errors, which saves you interpreting raw code.

Check the homepage and one inner page, such as the contact page. Many sites have markup on one and nothing on the other, usually because a plugin handles part of the site and nothing handles the rest.

Having some markup is not the same as having it right

Finding markup is only half the job. On a WordPress site, an SEO plugin will often add some structured data automatically, so a business can have markup and still be missing the useful parts. The common problems are these:

• Generic types only, such as an organisation or a website, with no local business type describing what the company actually does.
• A wrong or outdated address, phone number or set of opening hours, copied from a previous setup and never updated.
• Contact details that do not match the site's visible text or the Google Business Profile. This overlaps with the checks in running a NAP consistency audit, and inconsistent details are worth fixing wherever they appear.
• Errors or warnings in the validator that nobody has looked at since the plugin was installed.

What a good local setup looks like

For a single-location business, the aim is modest. The homepage or contact page carries a local business markup block with the correct name, address, telephone number and opening hours, plus a link to the main social profiles if they exist. A plumber serving Chesterfield would use a plumber type, and a bakery in Whitby would use a bakery type. If a business genuinely has reviews on its own site, those can be marked up too, but only where they are real and visible to visitors. Marking up reviews that do not appear on the page is the kind of shortcut that can earn a penalty rather than a benefit.

How to raise it with a prospect

Lead with the plain fact and keep it proportionate. “I ran your homepage through a structured data checker and it found no local business markup, so search engines are working out your address and hours from the page text alone” is true, checkable and calm. It is a small fix, so present it as one item among several, ideally next to something the owner can see for themselves, such as a slow page or a phone number that is hard to find. Nobody hires a designer because of invisible code alone, but it is a good sign of a site that has been built and left. If you are weighing where it sits among the other checks, the wider local SEO audit checklist gives it a place in order.

Where a search tool fits

When Patchscout enriches a business, it audits the website for speed, SEO, mobile and SSL, and detects the site builder, so you arrive at the schema check already knowing which sites are worth the extra two minutes. The structured data itself is a manual look, and it is worth keeping that way: it takes a moment, and reading the result for yourself means you can describe it accurately in your own words.

Patchscout then drafts the outreach email in your voice, grounded in the real audit findings, so a schema observation you have checked by hand can sit alongside what our system found and read as one honest message rather than a list of complaints.