Unlock the power of organization schema: A simple step-by-step guide (original) (raw)
Organization schema often gets a bad rap in our industry, with many dismissing it as too complex and more trouble than it’s worth. As a result, many marketers skip it altogether, relying on other strategies to spread the word about their business. We’re here today to set the record straight: That’s a mistake.
Contrary to popular belief, organization schema is actually very straightforward. If you can answer a few questions about your business and follow a simple template, you can generate organization schema in just a few minutes.
And you really should. Organization schema is one of the few opportunities where you can directly influence what appears in the search engine results pages (SERPs). By providing accurate, detailed information about your business, you’ll build authority with customers and search engines alike. Over time, this translates into greater visibility, better brand awareness, and yes—more traffic to your website.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to create organization schema using fill-in-the-blank templates, intuitive generation tools, and even artificial intelligence. Unlock the power of organization schema, and start improving your online presence today!
What is organization schema?
Organization schema is a type of structured data (information easily parsable by machines) that lives “behind the scenes” within your website’s code. It contains key details about your business, such as its name, its contact information, and the services it provides.
Search engines use this structured data to build a profile or knowledge graph entry about your business, strengthening their understanding of who you are and what you offer. They also display these details to users, ensuring accurate, up-to-date information appears in the SERPs.
How is organization schema structured, exactly? At its core, it’s structured like a simple two-column spreadsheet. One column contains a set of labels (called properties), and the other contains values based on the specifics of your business.
In some cases, especially for more complex businesses, some of these properties and values may nest within each other, similar to Russian stacking dolls. But the basic architecture remains the same: properties paired with corresponding values.
Who sets the standards for organization schema?
Back in the day, there was no “universal” organization schema. Different search engines required different elements, leading to confusion and inconsistency across the web.
To solve this problem, major search giants—including Google, Bing, Yahoo, and later Yandex—got together and decided on a universal standard for structured data.
The website schema.org launched in 2011 and continues to serve as a central resource for using structured data across the web.
What are the different types of organization schema?
Organization schema is both a specific type of schema and a parent category for various subtypes. In other words, Organization schema can apply to any business or entity, while its subtypes can only apply to more specific kinds of organizations.
For instance, the following are all subtypes of organization schema. They inherit the same properties as Organization and can be used in its stead to provide more specific information to search engines:
Pro tip: Unsure which category your business falls under? Read carefully through all of the organization schema subtypes or simply use generic “organization schema.”
In addition to its many subtypes, there are also several formats you can use to implement organization schema: Microdata, RDFa, and JSON-LD.
JSON-LD is considered the gold standard for adding structured data, including organization schema, and search engines like Google prefer it for its simplicity and reliability. Moving forward, all examples and instructions in this guide will use JSON-LD schema.
Where does organization schema go?
You’ll typically find organization schema markup inside a website’s tag. That’s because web crawlers like Googlebot and Bingbot know to look there for important structured data.
Now, which pages on your site benefit most from using organization schema?
Technically, you can include organization schema on any page of your website. However, that’s not necessary and can clutter your website and workflow. The best pages to add organization schema to include your:
- Homepage: The most visited page on your website. With few exceptions, most businesses should include organization schema on the homepage.
- About page: The second most important place to include organization schema; your about page defines your business and is a natural location for your schema.
- Contact page: Another good place to include organization schema. The contact info in your structured data should match the contact info on this page, providing a cohesive signal to web crawlers.
Depending on your website’s layout and marketing strategy, you may also consider adding organization schema to your articles and blog posts.
Why is organization schema important for SEO?
Organization schema teaches search engines about your business, providing accurate information to users and boosting your authority. Let’s take a closer look at some of the major benefits you can expect from implementing valid schema.
Improving search engine understanding
SEO is a complex web of interconnected parts, all of which work together to increase your online visibility.
Schema markup for business is just one part of this web—but it’s a critical one. Schema helps search engines better understand your business so they can present your website to the right visitors for the right search queries.
This is particularly important in the age of entity SEO and AI. The more you present your business as a bonafide brand with a well-documented and unified presence across the web, the more Google will recognize your site’s authority and the more organic visibility you’ll receive.
Can contribute to rich results and knowledge panels
What are rich results, exactly? Simply put, rich results are additional visual elements that appear within the SERPs next to your website. Some well-known examples of rich results include FAQ dropdown menus and star ratings for product pages.
Within the context of organization schema, rich results might display your company logo, contact information, company structure, or other elements—helping to strengthen your brand presence directly in search results.
Exactly how impactful are rich results? Very. For instance, Nestlé reported an 82% increase in click-through rate after introducing rich results to certain pages across company websites.
Equally impressive, Rakuten noticed a 50% increase in session duration on pages that had implemented structured data—suggesting that elements within the SERPs had an impact even after users had clicked into the site!
Beyond rich results, organization schema also contributes to the creation of detailed knowledge panels—those information boxes you see at the top or side of search results for notable brands.
By adding structured data for SEO to your website, you’re building credibility and providing searchers with convenient at-a-glance details about your business.
Enhancing brand visibility in SERPs
Organization schema is considered crucial for local SEO. And for good reason. Providing search engines with easy access to your location and contact details is essential for driving locals to your business.
With that said, it’s not just local businesses that can benefit from SEO structured data like organization schema. It’s also very important for branded SEO; after all, you want your company information to take as much of the SERP real estate as possible.
Provide search engines like Google with the information they need to build a detailed knowledge graph entry about your business, and they will reward you with greater visibility.
Increasing trust and authority
When you search for a business online and only find a single website link with a simple meta description, what crosses your mind? You’re probably thinking that it’s a small operation, one that hasn’t put much effort into developing a professional online presence.
Naturally, the opposite also holds true. When you see a detailed listing, complete with rich snippets featuring transparent contact details and a knowledge panel with additional information, you take that business more seriously. It’s clear that the company has put time and effort into creating a positive experience for search engines and customers, and those details matter.
How to implement organization schema on your website
We’ve touched on the technical details behind organization schema, as well as some of the tangible benefits you can expect from implementing it on your website. Now, let’s discuss how you can add structured data and begin reaping all the perks it has to offer.
Step 1: Identify key information about your business
The first step in creating organization schema is identifying and gathering the information you want to include.
Fun fact: there are over 75 different properties you can include in your organization schema. Of course, you don’t have to use all of them. Some are required, some are highly recommended, and some may be more or less important depending on the type of business you operate.
Essential properties
Technically, the only properties required within organization schema are context and type. However, there are a few other essential properties you’ll want to include no matter what type of organization you run:
| Property Name | Value |
|---|---|
| context | Consists of a link to schema.org |
| type | Organization or subtype of Organization like LocalBusiness |
| id | Your homepage URL followed by /#organization |
| name | The name of your business |
| url | Your homepage URL |
Here is an example of what these properties might look like as JSON-LD organization schema for a local web designer:
<script type="application/ld+json">{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Organization", "@id": "https://www.schemawebdesign.com/#organization", "name": "Schema Web Design", "url": "https://www.schemawebdesign.com/"}</script>
Of course, on its own, this information does little to provide a meaningful signal to search engines. In most cases, you’ll also want to include the recommended properties below.
Recommended properties
Including the following properties in your organization schema is not required, but most businesses will want to adopt some variation of them:
| Property Name | Value |
|---|---|
| description | A synopsis of your business |
| sameAs | Links to social profiles associated with your business |
| telephone | Your telephone number |
| Your email | |
| foundingDate | Date the company was founded |
| logo | The location of an image file containing your logo |
| founder | The person who founded your company |
| address | Your postal address |
Now, let’s combine these recommended properties with the JSON-LD we already wrote. Here’s a complete organization schema example:
<script type="application/ld+json">{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Organization", "@id": "https://www.schemawebdesign.com/#organization", "name": "Schema Web Design", "url": "https://www.schemawebdesign.com/", "description": "Schema Web Design builds stunning, responsive websites for small businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area.","sameAs": ["https://facebook.com/schemawebdesign","https://twitter.com/schemawebdesign" ], "telephone": "+1-555-555-5555", "email": "mailto:[[email protected]](/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection)", "foundingDate": "2020-01-01", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://www.schemawebdesign.com/schema-web-design-logo.png" }, "founder": { "@type": "Person","name": "Jane Doe"}, "address": { "@type": "PostalAddress", "streetAddress": "335 McAllister St", "addressLocality": "San Francisco", "addressRegion": "CA", "postalCode": "94102", "addressCountry": "US" }}</script>
As a reminder, all of the properties found on the schema.org organization page can be useful in different situations. Feel free to add any of them to your own schema by following the same formatting guidelines shown above.
Step 2: Generate your schema
Now that you’ve chosen the information you want to include in your markup, it’s time to generate your schema.
You have a number of options for generating your schema: You can use a template, generator tools, AI, plugins, or adapt another completed schema:
Use a template and DIY
Generating organization schema is pretty simple, especially now that you’ve gathered all the information you want to include.
When generating organization schema yourself, think about it like this: Each property name is the question, and each value is the answer.
Make sense?
Here is a boilerplate template to get you started. It includes organization schema for a generic business. Feel free to customize the properties and values by adding, removing, or changing them as you see fit:
<script type="application/ld+json">{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Organization", "@id": "https://yourwebsite.com/#organization", "name": "Your Organization Name", "url": "https://yourwebsite.com/", "description": "Brief description of your organization.", "sameAs":[ "https://facebook.com/yourpage", "https://twitter.com/yourhandle" ], "telephone": "+1-000-000-0000", "email": "[[email protected]](/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection)", "foundingDate": "YYYY-MM-DD", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://yourwebsite.com/path-to-your-logo.png" }, "founder": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Founder's Name" }, "address": { "@type": "PostalAddress", "streetAddress": "Your Street Address", "addressLocality": "City", "addressRegion": "State/Province", "postalCode": "Postal/ZIP Code", "addressCountry": "Country Code (e.g., US)" }}</script>
Use a schema generation tool
If writing schema yourself feels too overwhelming, that’s okay. These organization schema generators can get you started:
- Structured Data Markup Helper by Google
- Schema Markup Generator by Merkle
Do understand that neither of these schema generators is perfect. They both have limited customizability, with only a handful of editable fields. However, they can help you generate basic organization schema or provide a foundation for further customization.
Use artificial intelligence
AI can also help you create JSON-LD schema and other SEO structured data for your website. Here’s a prompt you can use to kickstart the process using large language models like ChatGPT or Google Gemini:
Help me create JSON-LD schema.org markup from scratch for my organization.
Ask me questions about all the most important properties, including id, name, url, description, social profiles, contact info, founding date, logo, founder, address, and any other properties you think would be useful.
Once you have the information, build a clean, properly formatted