Local Business Schema for Multiple Locations

Managing LocalBusiness schema markup for businesses with multiple branches can be tricky. However, implementing this markup correctly can significantly boost local SEO efforts and enhance search engine visibility 

In this guide, we will discuss the steps to implement LocalBusiness schema for multiple locations and provide helpful tips to ensure the process runs smoothly.

What is a Local Business schema?

LocalBusiness Schema Markup is a type of structured data that helps search engines understand specific details about your local business. This includes information such as your business name, address, phone number, operating hours, reviews, and more.

When implementing Local Business Schema markup on your website, you should include the following information when applicable:

• @type: Specify the type of business
• name: The official name of your business.
• description: Highlight specific details about what your business offers, its unique selling points, and any special features or services it provides.
• address: Use the PostalAddress 
• url: The URL of your business’s official website.
• openingHours: The hours your business is open, formatted in an ISO 8601 format. For example, “Mo-Fri 08:00-17:00.
• image: URLs to images representing your business, such as a logo or storefront photo.
• priceRange: An indication of the price range of your business, typically for businesses where pricing is relevant, such as restaurants or services.
• review: AggregateRating or individual reviews that highlight customer feedback about your business.
• areaServed: Geographic areas where your business provides service.
• sameAs: List all the other social media accounts or online presence associated with the same business.

Adding as much relevant information as possible within your Schema markup can help search engines better understand and represent your business in search results, potentially leading to increased visibility and engagement with potential customers.

How to add multi location schema markup: Step-by-Step

1. Identify the main “Parent” Organization
2. Choose the Schema Type and Gather Information
3. Create the parent markup 
4. Create schema for separate location
5. Implement the schema markup on the website
   • If you have separate landing pages for each location
   • If you don’t have separate landing pages for each location
6. Validate Schema Markup

When you have multiple locations, it’s important to structure your schema in a way that clearly depicts the hierarchy and relationships between the parent business and its locations.

For businesses with multiple locations, Google suggests using the “department” property to distinguish different locations.

1. Identify the main “Parent” Organization

Identifying the main parent organization is important because it determines the overarching entity that encompasses all the individual locations. This allows search engines like Google to understand the relationship between the various locations and the parent brand, which can improve the visibility and relevance of the business in search results.

For example, let’s use an Estonian chain of coffee shops “Reval Cafe” to demonstrate. Reval Cafe has separate physical location across Estonia, but they all belong to the same brand, Reval Cafe. In this case, Reval Cafe would be the main “parent” organization.

You can use Kalicube Pro Knowledge Graph API Explorer to check if it recognizes a particular entity. Essentially, this is what we aim to achieve with schema markup – we want to include entities that are relevant to us, whether they are individuals, businesses, or anything else.

You can also use the Explorer to find your knowledge graph ID and add it in your sameAs property to help Google make a connection between the entity and your brand.

2. Choose the schema type and gather information

While the parent schema type “Organization” serves as a broad category, you can use a more specific subtypes in “LocalBusiness” to provide search engines with precise information about each branch’s physical presence and operational details.

In our example, Reval Cafe is recognized as an Organization only but not as any kind of FoodEstablishment. But we can still specify it as CafeOrCoffeeShop or Restaurant when creating our schema markup for each cafe location.

However, think carefully about which LocalBusiness subtypes you’re using and make sure you don’t confuse Google by using irrelevant types.

Here are some subtypes of LocalBusiness that you can use based on your line of business:

• AutomotiveBusiness
• ChildCare
• Dentist
• DryCleaningOrLaundry
• EmploymentAgency
• FinancialService
• FoodEstablishment
• HealthAndBeautyBusiness
• HomeAndConstructionBusiness
• LegalService
• LodgingBusiness
• MedicalBusiness
• ProfessionalService
• RealEstateAgent
• Store
• TravelAgency

3. Create the parent markup 

After you have gathered all the information, you can start creating the schema for your Parent organization markup. 

In our Reval Cafe example, I am using Organization (instead of CafeOrCoffeeShop) as the main schema type because they also offer catering service. So using a more generic type can encompass all different services they are providing.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "name": "Reval Cafe",
  "url": "https://revalcafe.ee/",
  "logo": "https://revalcafe.ee/logo.png",
  "description": "Reval Cafe offers versatile breakfasts and lunches as well as heartier meals in cozy interiors. We prepare fresh bakery products for sweet tooth lovers and top quality coffee for coffee connoisseurs.",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "Müürivahe 14",
    "addressLocality": "Tallinn",
    "postalCode": "10146",
    "addressCountry": "Estonia"
  },
  "telephone": "+372 644 6702",
  "sameAs": [
     	"https://www.facebook.com/revalcafe",
    	"https://www.instagram.com/reval_cafe/",
     	"https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/g/11svn6m62x"]
}

4. Create schema for separate location

For each location, include relevant information such as name, address, phone number, opening hours, and any other pertinent details. These details should be nested within the corresponding department entity.

What we mean by nesting is add a field that will hold the data of your child schema within the parent schema. So, after your “sameAs” field, add a new field “department” and populate the schema of different location in an array.

This is an example for the LocalBusiness schema for Reval Cafe in Kumu.

{  	"@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "CafeOrCoffeeShop",
    "name": "Reval Cafe - Kumu",
    "@id": "https://revalcafe.ee/kohvik/kumu/#CafeOrCoffeeShop",
    "url": "https://revalcafe.ee/kohvik/kumu/",
    "description": "We are...",
    "telephone": "+372 602 6164",
    "priceRange": "$$",
    "address": {
        "@type": "PostalAddress",
        "streetAddress": "Weizenbergi 34 / Valge 1",
        "addressLocality": "Tallinn",
        "postalCode": "77000",
        "addressCountry": "Estonia"
    },
    "location": {
        "@type": "Place",
        "geo": {
            "@type": "GeoCoordinates",
            "latitude": 59.436701345702225,
            "longitude": 24.79557529427454
        }
    },
    "openingHoursSpecification": [
        {
            "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
            "dayOfWeek": "Monday",
            "opens": "10:00",
            "closes": "15:00"
        },
        {
            "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
            "dayOfWeek": "Tuesday",
            "opens": "10:00",
            "closes": "19:00"
        },
        {
            "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
            "dayOfWeek": "Wednesday",
            "opens": "10:00",
            "closes": "19:00"
        },
        {
            "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
            "dayOfWeek": "Thursday",
            "opens": "10:00",
            "closes": "20:00"
        },
        {
            "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
            "dayOfWeek": "Friday",
            "opens": "10:00",
            "closes": "19:00"
        },
        {
            "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
            "dayOfWeek": "Saturday",
            "opens": "10:00",
            "closes": "19:00"
        },
        {
            "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
            "dayOfWeek": "Sunday",
            "opens": "10:00",
            "closes": "20:00"
        }
    ]
}

Pro Tips:
Make sure you have an unique id property for each location – it should be unique for each office. It ensures that search engines and other applications can accurately distinguish between different locations and their respective data. Usually, I would use the URL and add #schemaType

5. Implement the schema markup on the website

After you’ve created the core schema markup for your parent organization and individual location, it’s time to add the schema markup on your website. 

Where to put the schema markup depends on how your website is structured:

If you have separate landing pages for each location

Having Local Business markup on individual landing pages allows search engines to cross-reference location-specific information with other data sources. This can further enhance the visibility and accuracy of your business listings across various platforms.

When you have separate landing pages for each location, you should:

1. Add the LocalBusiness markup to the relevant landing page.
2. Incorporate a comprehensive Organization markup nested with all the LocalBusiness schema for all locations under the “department” property  on the homepage.

If you don’t have separate landing pages for each location

In this case, simply add the markup to your website’s homepage or create a dedicated page listing all your locations. Include essential details like addresses, phone numbers, and operating hours for each location. 

Don’t forget to place the markup within the <script type=”application/ld+json”> tags in the <head> section of the homepage and/or on a dedicated landing page.

6. Validating schema markup

After implementing the JSON-LD markup for each location, it’s essential to validate the schema to ensure accuracy and compliance with search engine standards. Use online schema validation tools, such as Schema.org Validator, to check for errors or inconsistencies in your markup.

LocalBusiness Schema for Multiple Locations Example

By following a templated approach and customizing attributes for each location, businesses can efficiently implement multi location schema markup to improve local SEO performance.

This is an example of how the LocalBusiness schema for Reval Cafe with two branches (Kumu and Telliskivi)  would look like. (Side note: This is a simplified version just to demonstrate how to add multiple locations, so I omit information such as OpeningHoursSpecification)

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "name": "Reval Cafe",
  "url": "https://revalcafe.ee/",
  "logo": "https://revalcafe.ee/logo.png",
  "description": "Reval Cafe offers versatile breakfasts and lunches as well as heartier meals in cozy interiors. We prepare fresh bakery products for sweet tooth lovers and top quality coffee for coffee connoisseurs.",
  "address": {
	"@type": "PostalAddress",
	"streetAddress": "Müürivahe 14",
	"addressLocality": "Tallinn",
	"postalCode": "10146",
	"addressCountry": "Estonia"
  },
  "telephone": "+372 644 6702",
  "sameAs": [
	"https://www.facebook.com/revalcafe",
	"https://www.instagram.com/reval_cafe/",
	"https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/g/11svn6m62x"
  ],
  "department": [
	{
  	"@type": "CafeOrCoffeeShop",
  	"name": "Reval Cafe - Kumu",
  	"url": "https://revalcafe.ee/kohvik/kumu/",
  	"description": "The Reval Café of the Kumu Art Museum offers an opportunity to combine an art experience with the pleasure of good food.",
  	"telephone": "+372 602 6164",
  	"priceRange": "$$",
  	"address": {
    	"@type": "PostalAddress",
    	"streetAddress": "Weizenbergi 34 / Valge 1",
    	"addressLocality": "Tallinn",
    	"postalCode": "77000",
    	"addressCountry": "Estonia"
  	}
	},
	{
  	"@type": "CafeOrCoffeeShop",
  	"name": "Reval Cafe - Telliskivi",
  	"url": "https://revalcafe.ee/kohvik/telliskivi/",
  	"description": "Located on Telliskivi street, the cozy cafe follows the traditional Reval Café concept, offering a wide range of coffee drinks, locally baked pies and pastries, and hot and cold dishes.",
  	"telephone": "+372 600 12154",
  	"priceRange": "$$",
  	"address": {
    	"@type": "PostalAddress",
    	"streetAddress": "Telliskivi 51i",
    	"addressLocality": "Tallinn",
    	"postalCode": "10412",
    	"addressCountry": "Estonia"
  	}
	}
  ]
}

Conclusion

Implementing Local Business Schema for multiple locations is a crucial step for businesses aiming to enhance their online presence and attract local customers.

By accurately representing each location’s information, such as addresses, phone numbers, and operating hours, businesses can improve their visibility in local search results and provide a seamless user experience for potential customers.

Whether through individual landing pages or centralized location listings, Local Business Schema empowers businesses to stand out in competitive local markets and establish trust with their audience. 

FAQs