Short answer
Five types cover a practice site: a specific business type such as Dentist or MedicalClinic, a Person for each clinician, FAQPage only where the questions are visible, Article on posts, and BreadcrumbList. Every one must describe what is already on the page. Markup that describes invisible content is a liability.
Key takeaways
- Schema does not add information. It labels information a visitor can already read, so a machine can parse it without guessing.
- Google documents name and address as the only required properties for LocalBusiness. Use the most specific schema.org subtype that fits your practice.
- FAQPage belongs on the page whose questions are visible, never site-wide. Firing it on every page is the most common way practices break their own markup.
- Person schema with sameAs links is how a clinician becomes an entity rather than a name in a byline.
We inherited a site where the FAQ schema fired on all 40 pages, including the contact page and every service page, because a plugin defaulted to site-wide. Every one of those pages told search engines it contained six questions that were not on it. That is not a technicality. It is a page claiming something a crawler can check and disprove in the same request.
What schema is for
It is a labelling layer. The page already says you are a dental practice in Scottsdale open until six; schema says which string is the name, which is the address, and which is the opening time. Machines then read facts instead of inferring them, which is exactly what an assistant assembling an answer needs.
| Type | Where it goes | What it does | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dentist, Physician or MedicalClinic | Home page, and each location page | Identifies the practice as an entity with a name, address, phone and hours | Using generic LocalBusiness when a specific subtype exists |
| Person | Each clinician bio, referenced from articles | Turns a name into an entity, with role, employer and sameAs profiles | Declared once and never linked from the pages that cite the person |
| FAQPage | Only pages with a visible FAQ | Marks question and answer pairs so they can be extracted cleanly | Fired site-wide by a plugin, describing questions the page does not have |
| Article | Blog posts | Gives headline, author, publish date and review date | A dateModified that moves whenever the file changes, not when a human re-read it |
| BreadcrumbList | Any page below the home page | Describes where the page sits in the site | Breadcrumb labels that do not match the visible trail |
The rule that prevents almost every schema problem
Mark up only what a visitor can see on that page, in the same words. If an answer is in the schema, it must be readable on the page. If a rating is in the schema, the reviews must be visible. Schema is a description of the page, and a description that disagrees with the thing it describes is worse than none.
The way we keep that honest on this site is to generate the markup from the same data the page renders, so the two cannot drift apart. If you are on a CMS with a plugin, the equivalent discipline is to check the rendered page against the rendered markup after every template change, not after every content change.
Person schema is the one practices skip
It is also the one that matters most where expertise is being judged. Give each clinician a name, a job title, the practice as employer, and sameAs links to the profiles that verify them: state licence board, association directories, and a professional profile. That is what lets a model connect three mentions to one person.
Spell the name and credentials identically everywhere. Dr Jane Smith, Jane Smith DDS and J. Smith DDS can end up as three faint entities instead of one clear one, and a faint entity is the kind an assistant declines to recommend.
What schema will not do
It will not make a thin page authoritative, it does not guarantee a rich result, and Google has restricted FAQ rich results to well-known government and health sites since 2023. Add it for clean extraction and accurate parsing. If a vendor sells schema as the thing that will get you into AI answers, they are selling the label and skipping the work.
Questions people ask
Which schema type should a dental practice use?
Dentist, which is a schema.org subtype of both LocalBusiness and MedicalBusiness. Use the most specific type that fits rather than generic LocalBusiness. Google requires only name and address, and the recommended properties are worth filling anyway.
Can I put FAQ schema on every page?
No. FAQPage belongs only on pages where those exact questions and answers are visible to a visitor. Plugins that fire it site-wide are the most common way practice sites end up describing content that is not there.
Does schema markup improve my ranking?
Not directly. It helps machines parse what your page already says, which affects eligibility for some features and makes extraction cleaner for assistants. Treat it as plumbing that removes ambiguity, not as a ranking lever.
How do I check my markup is correct?
Run the page through a schema validator and Google’s Rich Results Test, then read the rendered page beside the rendered markup and confirm every marked-up string is visible. Re-check after template changes rather than after content changes.
Should the practice or the clinician be the main entity?
Both, linked. The practice is the business entity with address and hours. Each clinician is a Person, employed by that business, with sameAs links to independent profiles. Articles should name the clinician entity as author rather than repeating a plain name.
Sources
- Google Search Central, local business structured data documentation (accessed 20 September 2026): name and address as the only required properties, the recommended property list, and the instruction to use the most specific subtype.
- schema.org type hierarchy for MedicalBusiness: That Dentist, Physician and MedicalClinic exist as specific types beneath LocalBusiness and MedicalBusiness.
Published . Last reviewed .
Want this in your business?
Book a call and we will scope exactly which part of your operation an agent should take first.
Book a call with the team