There's a piece of SEO that most tradespeople have never heard of — and that most of their websites don't include. It's called schema markup, or structured data. It's invisible to your visitors, but it's one of the clearest signals you can send to Google about what your business does.
Done right, it gives you an edge over competitors whose sites don't have it — which, in most local trade categories, is the majority of them.
Here's what it is, why it matters, and why most website builders fall short on this.
What Schema Markup Actually Is
Google reads websites the way you'd read any webpage — scanning the text, looking at headings, checking titles. Most of the time it can figure out what a business does. But "figuring out" isn't the same as being told directly.
Schema markup is code added to a website that tells Google explicitly: this is a business, this is what type, this is the service it provides, this is the area it covers, and these are the people who reviewed it. No interpretation required.
It's written in a format called JSON-LD — a structured block of information that sits in the page code, invisible to visitors but readable by search engines. Think of it as a label on a tin: instead of reading all the ingredients, Google just reads the label.
The technology is backed by a collaboration between Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex — a shared vocabulary called Schema.org. When your website uses it correctly, every major search engine understands your business more precisely.
Why It Matters for Local Tradespeople
Search engines make ranking decisions based on how confident they are that your business is relevant to a given search. The more clearly you can communicate relevance, the better your chances of being shown.
Schema markup increases that confidence. A plumber's website that explicitly declares itself as a LocalBusiness of type Plumber, serving a specific geographic area, with verified services and customer ratings, is a more trustworthy data source than one that just mentions "we do plumbing" in paragraph text.
There are a few practical benefits:
Rich results. Certain schema types unlock enhanced search result displays — star ratings appearing directly in search results, FAQ answers expanding in the listing, review counts showing up under your business name. These don't always trigger, but when they do they increase your click-through rate significantly.
Map Pack reinforcement. Google Business Profile isn't the only place Google looks for information about your business. Your website's schema data cross-references your GBP — when they agree, it strengthens the signal.
Voice search. When someone asks their phone "who's the best electrician near me," the answers come from structured data. Schema markup is how you get into those results.
The Schema Types That Matter for Tradespeople
Not all schema types are equally relevant. Here are the ones worth having on a trades website.
LocalBusiness (with trade-specific type)
The foundational schema for any trades site. It declares your business type (Electrician, Plumber, Roofer — Schema.org has specific types for most trades), your address, phone number, service area, and opening hours. This is the minimum. Everything else builds on it.
Service
A schema type for each service you offer — boiler installation, emergency callouts, bathroom fitting — with a description, the area where it's provided, and an indication of the provider. This helps Google understand the full breadth of what you do, not just your business category.
FAQ
If your website has FAQ sections (and it should, for both SEO and user experience), marking those up with FAQ schema can cause Google to show the questions and answers directly in search results. Someone searching "how much does a new boiler cost" might see your FAQ answer before they even reach your site.
Review / AggregateRating
If you're displaying customer reviews on your website, marking them up with review schema tells Google those ratings are real and structured. This is what enables the star ratings to appear in search results.
Why Most Trades Websites Don't Have It
Here's the honest truth: most DIY website builders don't add schema markup for you, at least not the right kind. Squarespace, Wix, and similar platforms might add a basic organisation schema, but they won't add service-specific schema, location-specific markup, or FAQ schema automatically. You'd need to know it was missing and add it yourself — which most tradespeople don't know to do.
Even many web designers who build trade sites don't include proper schema. It requires knowing what types to use, writing the JSON-LD correctly, and making sure it stays accurate as the site is updated. It's not glamorous work, so it often gets skipped.
This is exactly why it's still an opportunity. Local search isn't a level playing field — it rewards the businesses that do the boring, structural things correctly while their competitors focus only on what's visible.
You Don't Have to Do This Yourself
Schema markup is technical work. Getting it wrong — wrong types, inaccurate data, broken JSON — does nothing or actively hurts your rankings. It's not the thing to experiment with if you're not confident in what you're doing.
The right answer is to have it built into your website from the start, so it's always accurate and always working.
DCS builds schema markup into every site I create automatically. LocalBusiness schema, service schema, FAQ schema, review schema — all generated from your business configuration and kept in sync as your content changes. You don't have to think about it.
It's one of the structural advantages my sites have over a Wix build or a generic web design — and it's the kind of thing that compounds quietly in the background, doing its job every time someone searches for your trade in your area.
If you want a website that's built to rank — not just built to look good — get in touch with DCS and I can talk through what your business needs.