The schema types that matter most for GEO

Why the short list matters

If you visit schema.org and look at the full catalogue of structured data types, you’ll find hundreds of them. There’s a type for events, for recipes, for radio stations, for podiatric clinics, for individual chapters of books. The catalogue is exhaustive — which makes it useful for developers, and intimidating for anyone trying to figure out what to actually use.

The reality is that most websites only need five or six types to get the structured data work that matters done. Knowing which five or six is the entire point of this lesson.

The types below are the ones that do real work for GEO across almost every business. If your site has these in place, accurately and consistently, you’ve covered most of what AI systems need to understand who you are and what you publish.

The five types that matter most

Person. Used on your About page, author pages, and team pages. Identifies an individual as a distinct entity — name, job title, where they’re based, where else they appear online (LinkedIn, GitHub, professional profiles). This is the schema type that anchors the author entity for the whole site. If you write under your own name, Person schema on your About page is one of the highest-leverage things you can add.

Organization. Used on your homepage, About page, and contact page. Identifies your business as a distinct entity — name, what it does, where it’s based, how to reach it. For freelancers, this and Person often describe the same thing and can be combined; for larger businesses, they’re separate and complementary. Either way, this is how AI systems learn what your business actually is.

LocalBusiness. A more specific variant of Organization for businesses that serve a particular geographic area. Includes address, opening hours, service area, and contact methods. If you serve local customers — dentists, dealerships, agencies with a defined city, restaurants — LocalBusiness schema is doing work that Organization alone can’t.

Article. Used on blog posts, insights pieces, and any informational content. Identifies a piece of content as a written article, with an author, a publication date, and a topic. This is what tells AI systems “this is content, written by this person, on this date, about this subject.” Critical for any site that publishes content regularly.

FAQPage. Used on pages that contain a list of questions and answers — whether labelled as an FAQ or just structured that way. Maps each question and answer to a format AI systems can extract cleanly. The pages on your site that already have question-style headings (covered in lesson 12) are the natural candidates. Adding FAQPage schema to them is almost always worthwhile.

These five handle the structured-data needs of the vast majority of websites. A typical small business or freelancer site might use Person and Organization on the homepage and About page, LocalBusiness for the contact page, Article on every blog post, and FAQPage on the pages with question-style content. That’s it. Five types, used consistently.

Two more worth knowing about

A few other schema types come up often enough to mention, even if they don’t apply universally.

Product. Used on pages that describe a specific physical or digital product — software, books, courses, physical goods. Includes name, description, price, availability. If your business sells things, Product schema on each listing is what makes those listings legible to AI systems and shopping tools. If your business sells services rather than products, this doesn’t apply.

Service. The service equivalent of Product. Used on pages that describe a specific service you offer — “WordPress hosting,” “logo design,” “tax preparation.” Less commonly implemented than Product, but increasingly useful as AI systems get better at recommending services rather than just products. Worth adding to dedicated service pages if you have them.

You’ll see plenty of other schema types in the wild — Recipe, Event, Course, BreadcrumbList, ImageObject, and so on. They’re all useful in their proper place. They’re just not the load-bearing types for most websites. If your site needs them (a cooking site needs Recipe; an events business needs Event), your developer should know to add them. If your site doesn’t, you don’t need to think about them.

How to know which ones you actually need

A short checklist. Run through it and see which apply.

• Do you have an About page that describes an individual? → Person belongs there.
• Do you have a business that operates as an organisation? → Organization belongs on your homepage and About page.
• Do you serve customers in a specific city or region? → LocalBusiness belongs on your contact page (and possibly your homepage).
• Do you publish blog posts, insights, or articles? → Article belongs on each one.
• Do any of your pages contain question-and-answer content? → FAQPage belongs on those.
• Do you sell physical or digital products? → Product belongs on each listing.
• Do you offer distinct, named services? → Service belongs on each service page.

If you’ve answered yes to most of these, your site probably needs five or six schema types in total. That’s a manageable scope to brief a developer on — and a much shorter list than the hundreds in the schema.org catalogue suggested.

A small note on combinations

Schema types aren’t mutually exclusive. A single page can carry multiple types — and often should.

Your About page might include both Person schema (describing you) and Organization schema (describing your business). Your homepage might include Organization, LocalBusiness, and FAQPage (if it has an FAQ section). A blog post might include both Article and Person (linking the post to its author). This kind of layering is normal and helpful — each type adds a different piece of structured information about the same page.

The thing to avoid is duplication or contradiction. If your Person schema says you’re based in Toronto and your LocalBusiness schema says you’re in Vancouver, the AI doesn’t know which one to trust. Internal consistency matters as much as accurate type selection.

A useful mindset

Five types, used consistently, beat fifty types, used inconsistently. The schema you actually maintain is the schema that actually works.

If you can name the five types your site uses and explain what each one is for, you’re in a stronger position than 90% of websites — most of which either have no structured data at all or have it implemented messily by a long-departed developer.

Coming up in the next lesson: How to know if your schema is working. You’ve learned what structured data is and which types matter. The final lesson of the module covers how to confirm it’s actually live, valid, and doing what it should — in steps anyone can follow.