Schema Markup, Written by Hand and Actually Correct

The Honest Version: Schema Is Not a Ranking Trick

What it does not do

Adding schema will not lift a page that has nothing to say. It is a description, not an argument. If your page does not deserve to rank, describing it more precisely will not change that.

What it genuinely does

It removes guesswork. Without it, a search engine reads your words and infers what you are. With it, you state it. That matters most for businesses whose category is not obvious from the text.

And it decides eligibility for the extra things in results: review stars, prices, FAQs, event dates. You cannot get those without it.

Why it matters more now

AI answers need to extract facts and attribute them. Structured data is the cleanest source they have. Sites with accurate schema get quoted; sites without it get summarised without credit.

What I Do

1. Decide what you actually are

Sounds obvious. It is the step everyone skips. A consultant, an agency, a shop and a local service all need different markup, and getting this wrong makes everything after it wrong.

2. Write it by hand

Matched to what is actually on the page, so nothing contradicts anything. Generated markup is fast and usually wrong in ways nobody notices.

3. Connect the pages

Your pages should describe one business, not a series of unrelated documents. This is the part that makes an entity legible rather than a pile of URLs.

4. Validate and check the result

Not just “no errors”. Whether the thing you wanted actually appears, and if not, why.

When You Do Not Need Me

Your plugin output is already accurate. Some are fine for simple sites. If it describes you correctly and validates, leave it.

You want stars and are not eligible. Review markup for your own business, written by you, is against the rules and gets ignored or penalised. I will not add it.

Nothing else on the page works. Schema on a page nobody can find is decoration.

What You Can Check Yourself First

Two free checks tell you whether your markup is helping or describing somebody else’s business.

1. Run a page through the Rich Results Test

Google’s own tool shows exactly what it reads from your page. It tells you which types were found and whether anything is eligible for enhanced results.

If it finds nothing, you effectively have no schema regardless of what your plugin claims.

2. Read what it actually says about you

This is the step everyone skips. Look at the business name, the type, the description and the address it reports. Ask whether that is genuinely your business.

Plugin-generated markup frequently describes a generic organisation with placeholder details. It validates perfectly and tells search engines almost nothing true.

3. Check Search Console for errors

Under Enhancements, Google lists structured data problems it found. Warnings can often be ignored. Errors mean the markup is being discarded entirely, which means it is doing nothing at all.

Schema Errors and Why Rich Results Disappear

A common situation: you had review stars or FAQ results, and one day they stopped.

Errors mean the markup is ignored

A missing required field invalidates the whole block. Google does not use part of it, it discards it, and whatever you were eligible for quietly ends.

Google also retires result types

Several rich result types have been reduced or removed entirely over the past few years, FAQ results among them. If yours vanished across your whole site on one date, it is more likely Google changed policy than that you broke something.

And eligibility is not entitlement

Correct markup makes you eligible. It does not oblige Google to show anything. Sites are frequently perfectly marked up and still show nothing extra, which is disappointing but not a fault.

I will tell you which of those three you have rather than charging to fix markup that was never the problem.