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.
Local Business Schema Image requirement
-
Hello,
I work exclusively with Dentists and we have been putting our json schema in the footer for a while now. Just recently they made 'image' a requirement for the Dentist category. We already use the logo in our schema and that is an image. Since the schema is in the footer, it is on every page, and the only image on every page is the logo. Does the image we add to our schema need to be on the actual web page or could it be anything related to the business, like an image of the practice or the dentist? Would it hurt to have the logo listed twice in the schema - once as the logo and once as the image? Trying to figure out what the best thing to do is for the required 'image' field for a dentist.
Thanks! Angela
-
Hey Tim,
I would have a page for everything you offer. That's by far the best strategy. So on your Invisalign page have a picture of Invisalign and don't mark it as dentist schema mark it as product. I think the dentist schema is rubbish myself. You're much better off using an image of All on Four on your All on four product page and marking it up that way.
Nobody is interested n your brand and logo if your a small local practice. They search things like 'Braces New York' and want to see the options for all the braces you offer or your orthodontist.
I use the data highlighter for this because it gets us better results. On the homepage you can't get review schema to show stars and all you're going to achieve is getting your logo up there when someone types in the name of your dentist so what's the point?
Go for unbranded products and keywords and mark them up with price, availability and an image with an alt tag with your location in it. that works for us.
Sometimes having dentist schema in the site wide footer just overrides our product schema for the services pages so I don't use it. For your dentists mark them up individually as people with their headshots there and what they do and their postnominals and qualifications.
Also make sure your GMB has orthodontist, endodontist, oral surgeon etc so that you show as an orthodontist in the maps when someone types in braces. Also having reviews mentioning the products helps.
Google ignores about 70% of our mark-up anyway and I think it's becoming less important as google figures out what things are and what they mean. But a granular approach works the best. So one page for everything you do with the dentist as author marked up with the products they offer marked up and then it makes the dentist one kind of obsolete.
This is just my experience in our practice but we're ranking number one for pretty much everything now. Interestingly we're not doing so well for just the term 'dentist' but on the other hand we're ranking really well for 'emergency dentist' and I think the two might be competing with one another. Emergencies is much higher volume and makes us more money. being number one for dentist didn't actually get us many good patients.
Being number one for Veneers Cost or Invisalign or Fastbraces or Emergencies does. So perhaps focus more on those. Dentists make the big mistake of putting everything they do on the homepage and that is a big mistake because you can never compete with my specific page that answers a customers specific dental query. If I had toothe ache I'd google painful tooth and google returns our emergencies page. I don't google 'dentist' If I need braces I google braces - not 'dentist'
-
Hi everyone,
Thanks for the answers so far.
To clarify, I didn't mean that schema is a requirement on websites. I meant that we do choose to use a schema in our footer and until recently - maybe in the past three weeks - our schema passed the structured data testing tool.
They are now throwing the following error when we test the schema - https://gyazo.com/e88390bffd1b280e48904958da145fb0
We use a type of Dentist - "@type": "Dentist",
The lions group post is interesting........
I am just not sure what kind of image google wants to see since we already use the logo field. My first thought is to use an image of the practice if available, but since the practice image is not on every page of the website, but the schema is, would that hurt us? Or does it not matter?
Thanks! Angela
-
I think the OP is not saying Schema is mandatory but that "Just recently they made 'image' a requirement for the Dentist category." having an 'Image' in the dentist schema is now an option. Again - it's not mandatory. Test it. I am a dentist and find that sometimes images get shown for products and most of the time they don't.
It has nothing to do with the JSON that I create for the dentist category. I have better success just marking all your products and services up as products with the price etc and making your pages have good structure, H1 etc. Make all the FAQ's H3 and they'll get blue hyperlinks in the serp when people ask that question or a part of it.
PM me. Schema hasn't really helped us a huge amount. Sometimes I completely forget to mark up a new page and it ranks and has all the bells and whistles of schema because google has detected them. I do use wordpress though and they are good at telling Google what's on the page.
-
Hi Tim,
You are (fortunately) not the first to run into this problem.
The solution places a hidden image in the footer. Not ideal, but a potential work around. Perhaps Miriam can comment on whether she thinks it might be a risky tactic.
-
Hi. First, I had a speech therapy clinic in Madrid (related with dentist). We have our website optimized for Schema.org.
This technology is not mandatory, but it is recommended to provide data to search engines such as Google or Bing.
Our website is configured with the option of Local Business, but I did not know anything about the images that can be put.
I understand that the images can only be put in Blog Articles and in Cooking Recipes.
If I'm wrong, please correct me. Thank you.
-
Hi Angela,
Could you offer a bit more background on this as to who made Schema a requirement for dentists? Schema is an optional technology, typically, so I'm trying to understand the circumstances in which you're hearing that it's mandatory. Thanks!
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
-
Unsolved Duplicate LocalBusiness Schema Markup
Hello! I've been having a hard time finding an answer to this specific question so I figured I'd drop it here. I always add custom LocalBusiness markup to clients' homepages, but sometimes the client's website provider will include their own automated LocalBusiness markup. The codes I create often include more information. Assuming the website provider is unwilling to remove their markup, is it a bad idea to include my code as well? It seems like it could potentially be read as spammy by Google. Do the pros of having more detailed markup outweigh that potential negative impact?
Local Website Optimization | Mar 28, 2022, 3:42 PM | GoogleAlgoServant0 -
I want to rank a national home page for a local keyword phrase
Hello - We are a nationally available brand based in Denver, CO. Our home page currently ranks #8 (used to be 5) for "real estate photography in Denver" -- I want to improve this ranking, but our home page is generalized and not geared toward Denver, CO but to all of our markets. I'm trying to troubleshoot this and have a few ideas.... I would love advice on the best route, or a different route altogether: Create a Denver-specific page -- _will that page compete with my home page that is already ranked in the top ten? _ Add the keyword phrase in the image alt attribute Add keyword phrase into the content - need to make sure that viewers realize we are national I already updated the meta description to say "real estate photography in Denver and beyond"
Local Website Optimization | Mar 5, 2019, 5:42 PM | virtuance_photography1 -
In local SEO, how important is it to include city, state, and state abbreviation in doctitle?
I'm trying to balance local geographic keywords with product keywords. I appreciate the feedback from the group! Michael
Local Website Optimization | Nov 13, 2017, 5:07 PM | BFMichael0 -
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 | Feb 5, 2016, 7:49 PM | Noriel0 -
How can i optimize my pages for local areas if we are not in that area?
Hi Mozers! So I watched a video about Matt Cutts he talks about creating multiple web pages just for one keywords is an absolutely no go. So I was wondering we serve a clients in NZ Australia and USA, If we target phrase like Psychic Readings California, Psychic Readings San Diego etc (USA) Psychic Readings Melbourne, Psychic Readings Sydney (AU) Psychic Readings Auckland, Psychic Readings Wellington (NZ) What is the best practice or right way to go about structuring my pages to do this without going against googles guidelines. Many thanks
Local Website Optimization | Jun 18, 2015, 1:56 AM | edward-may1 -
Schema - Street Address
I'm starting to use schema on a site currently working on the business address in the footer. What is the correct way to use data that has more than one line? So for example the address is something like "Unit 1, Some Farm, Some Street..." Unit 1, Some Farm Some Street or Unit 1, Some Farm
Local Website Optimization | Oct 14, 2014, 1:59 PM | MickEdwards
Some Street0 -
Yoast Local SEO Reviews/Would it work for me?
Hi everyone, I'm looking for some feedback on Yoast Local SEO, and if you think it'd work for our site. www.kempruge.com. Our site is a wordpress site, and there's nothing about it, off the top of my head, that makes me think it wouldn't work, but I've been wrong before. We do use All-In-One SEO, not the Yoast plugin, so I'm not sure if that's compatible.or would cause a problem? (The reason we use All-In-One and not Yoast is because that's what we had when I got here, and I'm worried what would happen if we switched). Also, we have three offices, and I need to be able to do local seo for all three. I know Yoast says it supports multiple offices, but I'd feel more comfortable if someone on here let me know from his/her experience that it did. Anything else you want to add about Yoast Local, I'm all ears! Thanks, Ruben
Local Website Optimization | Jun 5, 2014, 9:22 PM | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Local Business Schema Markup on every page?
Hello, I have two questions..if someone could shed some light on the topic, I would be so very grateful! 1. I am still making my way through how schema is employed, and as I can tell, it is much more specific (and therefore relevant) in its details than using the data highlighter tool. Is this true? 2. Most of my clients' sites have a footer with the local business info included on every page of their site (address and phone). This said, I have been using the structured data markup helper to add local business schema to home page, and then including the footer markup in the footer file so that every page benefits from the local business markup. Is this incorrect to use it for every page? Also, I noticed that by just using the footer markup for the rest of the pages in the site, I am missing data that was included when I manually went through the index page (i.e. image, url, name of business). Could someone tell me if it is advisable and worth it to manually markup every page for the local business schema or if that should just be used for certain pages such as location, contact us, and/or index? Any tips or help would be greatly appreciated!!! Thanks
Local Website Optimization | May 4, 2017, 11:30 AM | lfrazer0