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
-
Geo-location by state/store
Hi there, We are a Grocery co-operative retailer and have chain of stores owned by different people. We are building a new website, where we would geo-locate the closest store to the customer and direct them to a particular store (selected based on cookie and geo location). All our stores have a consistent range of products + Variation in 25% range. I have few questions How to build a site-map. Since it will be mandatory for a store to be selected and same flow for the bot and user, should have all products across all stores in the sitemap? we are allowing users to find any products across all stores if they search by product identifier. But, they will be able to see products available in a particular store if go through the hierarchical journey of the website. Will the bot crawl all pages across all the stores or since it will be geolocated to only one store, the content belonging to only one store will be indexed? We are also allowing customers to search for older products which they might have bought few years and that are not part of out catalogue any more. these products will not appear on the online hierarchical journey but, customers will be able to search and find the products . Will this affect our SEO ranking? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks - Costa
Local Website Optimization | | Hanuman881 -
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 -
Local SEO - Multiple stores on same URL
Hello guys, I'm working on a plan of local SEO for a client that is managing over 50 local stores. At the moment all the stores are sharing the same URL address and wanted to ask if it s better to build unique pages for each of the stores or if it's fine to go with all of them on the same URL. What do you think? What's the best way and why? Thank you in advance.
Local Website Optimization | | Noriel0 -
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 -
How does duplicate content work when creating location specific pages?
In a bid to improve the visibility of my site on the Google SERP's, I am creating landing pages that were initially going to be used in some online advertising. I then thought it might be a good idea to improve the content on the pages so that they would perform better in localised searches. So I have a landing page designed specifically to promote what my business can do, and funnel the user in to requesting a quote from us. The main keyword phrase I am using is "website design london", and I will be creating a few more such as "website design birmingham", "website design leeds". The only thing that I've changed at the moment across all these pages is the location name, I haven't touched any of the USP's or the testimonial that I use. However, in both cases "website design XXX" doesn't show up in any of the USP's or testimonial. So my question is that when I have these pages built, and they're indexed, will I be penalised for this tactic?
Local Website Optimization | | mickburkesnr0 -
Duplicate Schema within webpage
I'm implementing schema across a few Wordpress sites. Most (probably all) WP sites use widgets for their footer, which offer their own editable HTML. Is it damaging (or helpful) to implement the exact same markup in the footer and a specific page, like for instance, a locations page that has the address and contact info (which are also in the footer)?
Local Website Optimization | | ReunionMarketing0 -
How Best to do implement a Branch Locator for a Website with invididual location category pages
Hi All, We have an ecommerce Website with multiple locations for our stores and we currently display separate location specific pages for the different categories and sub categories. This has helped us previously to rank well for local search in each of the areas we have a store but over the last few months since humingbird, our local rankings on some things have dip a little . We want to implement a branch locator of some description to improve the user experience. From looking at other websites with branch locators, they tend to a separate button/page with which you can search for a branch etc. However, they don't have location specific pages. My query is should I do it so if a user comes in on a specific category location page and follows it through to product page , then to have a tab on the product page displaying the local branch from which he can come in. My thinking here is that , is that it would help confirm my local citations and help improve local rankings. Or Should the local branch be displayed on the local category pages instead or as well ?. If a user comes in from the homepage or not on a specific location page, then the branch locator will allow them to search for a specific branch. Should I also put in a branch locator as a separate page or can It be in more places. I don't want to damage anything which may have an effect on rankings due to citations and NAP on the location specific pages. Any advice or good examples to look at would be greatly appreciated thanks Sarah.
Local Website Optimization | | SarahCollins1 -
Single Site For Multiple Locations Or Multiple Sites?
Hi, Sorry if this rambles on. There's a few details that kind of convolute this issue so I'll try and be as clear as possible. The site in question has been online for roughly 5 years. It's established with many local citations, does well in local SERPs (working on organic results currently), and represents a business with 2 locations in the same county. The domain is structured as location1brandname.com. The site was recently upgraded from a 6-10 page static HTML site with loads of duplicate content and poor structure to a nice, clean WordPress layout. Again, Google is cool with it, everything was 301'd properly, and our rankings haven't dropped (some have improved). Here's the tricky part: To properly optimize this site for our second location, I am basically building a second website within the original, but customized for our second location. It will be location1brandname.com/secondcity and the menu will be unique to second-city service pages, unique NAP on footer, etc. I will then update our local citations with this new URL and hopefully we'll start appearing higher in local SERPs for the second-city keywords that our main URL isn't currently optimized for. The issue I have is that our root domain has our first city location in the domain and that this might have some negative effect on ranking for the second URL. Conversely, starting on a brand new domain (secondcitybrandname.com) requires building an entire new site and being brand new. My hunch is that we'll be fine making root.com/secondcity that locations homepage and starting a new domain, while cleaner and compeltely separate from our other location, is too much work for not enough benefit. It seems like if they're the same company/brand, they should be on the same sitee. and we can use the root juice to help. Thoughts?
Local Website Optimization | | kirmeliux0