Schema markup is a hidden layer of labels on your web pages that spells out your facts, your services, hours, location, prices, and reviews, in a structured form that search engines and AI read directly, without interpreting the visible design. It is often called structured data, and it sits in the page’s code where visitors never see it.
The payoff is accuracy. With it, Google and the assistants describe your business from labeled facts instead of guessing from paragraphs, which is how correct hours land in a result or a right answer lands in an AI reply. Most pages skip it: fewer than half of pages carry any structured data (HTTP Archive Web Almanac, 2024), so doing it properly is a quiet edge.
Each kind of fact has a type: a local business, a service, an FAQ, a person. The more of your real facts you label, the less any machine has to guess. It underpins ordinary SEO, AI Overviews, and answer engine optimization alike.
I write structured data into every page of a build, matched to what your business actually is. A machine can only state your facts correctly if you have given them to it in a form it can read. See how a full build is put together.