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Correct use of schema for online store and physical stores
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I have been getting conflicting advice on the best way to implement schema for the following scenario.
There is a central e-commerce store that is registered to it's own unique address which is "head office". There are a few physical shops each of which has their own location and address. Each shop has its own landing page within /our-stores/.
So each page on the website has the Organisation schema for the central 'organisation', something like:
Then on each physical store landing page is something like the following as well as the Organisation schema:
Is this correct? If it is should I extend LocalBusiness with store URL and sameAs for GMB listing and maybe Companies House registration?
It's also been suggested that we should use LocalBusiness for the head office of the company, then Departmentwith the typeStore. But i'm not sure on that?
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The head office happens to be the e-commerce store. Then there are actual physical stores that sell the same products physically.
So we do want visibility for 'HQ' as the main 'entity'. Yes if anyone has a problem they contact the shop or HQ/e-commerce store. So with that in mind I still need clarification of the schema to use.
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Google state here:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/local-business
That "Local Business" is what they use. "Organization" does not appear in that list
Think about what you want to achieve. Utilising schema helps contact details (and many other, granular pieces of information) to jump out for brand, or entity-based queries
If you have a head office which you're working on, aren't most of the queries to HQ internal? Do you really want people calling up HQ instead of going to one of the purpose-built, consumer outlets? Obviously if you're looking to ascertain a mixture of B2B and B2C leads, what I'm saying might not quite be accurate
In most circumstances, I wouldn't want work-offices (HQ) to be more visible in Google's search results, so I would eradicate all schema. Then I'd just go with LocalBusiness schema for all the outlets
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