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Quick answer: Yoast SEO structured data is the connected schema graph the free plugin adds to every page: Organization or Person, WebSite, WebPage, BreadcrumbList and, on posts, Article. It describes who runs the site well. It does not, on its own, tell Google you are a local business with an address, opening hours and a specific business type.
Most Singapore WordPress owners install Yoast, see a green light and assume their schema is done. Structured data (code in the page that labels facts such as your business name, address or article author so search engines can read them reliably) is one of the things Yoast genuinely does well out of the box. But “out of the box” means something specific, and it is narrower than most people think. If you want help separating plugin defaults from real gaps, our technical SEO services cover exactly this kind of review.
This piece is not a plugin comparison, and it is not about duplicate schema from several plugins fighting each other. It looks at Yoast SEO structured data on its own terms: what the free plugin outputs by default, which settings you control, and where you need an add-on or custom code.
The conclusion we will build to is simple. Yoast’s default graph handles the identity layer well. A Singapore local business that stops at the defaults, though, is described to Google as a generic Organization, not a LocalBusiness. The real work is in the Site representation settings, the per-page Schema tab choices, and the business-type markup that free Yoast does not add on its own.
Yoast’s developer documentation describes its schema as a “graph”: a single block of JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data, the format Google recommends for structured data) in which each piece has an ID and points to the others. Instead of several disconnected snippets, you get one connected description of the site.
According to Yoast’s own schema output documentation, every page tries to output three core pieces:
On top of that base, Yoast adds pieces depending on context. BreadcrumbList describes where the page sits in your site hierarchy. ImageObject describes the logo and key images. On single posts, an Article piece is added and connected to the WebPage, with an author Person. If you use Yoast’s FAQ or How-to blocks in the block editor, the plugin adds FAQPage or HowTo markup tied to those blocks.
What makes this good is the linking. The Article says who published it by pointing to the Organization’s ID. The WebPage says which site it is part of by pointing to the WebSite’s ID. Google does not have to guess that the logo on your blog post belongs to the same business as the logo on your homepage, because the graph says so.
In our experience, this identity layer is the part of schema that small business sites most often get wrong when they hand-code it, and the part Yoast gets right with almost no effort. That is worth acknowledging before we get to the gaps. A spa, clinic or tuition centre that installs Yoast and fills in its settings correctly already has cleaner identity markup than many custom builds.
The limit is in the word “Organization”. Schema.org (the shared vocabulary that Google, Bing and others use for structured data) has hundreds of more specific types under LocalBusiness, such as DaySpa, BeautySalon, Dentist or Restaurant. Free Yoast does not offer a way to choose one of them for your business.
The single most important Yoast SEO structured data setting is not on any page. It sits under Yoast SEO, then Settings, then Site representation. Yoast’s help documentation describes this as the information Google can use for its Knowledge Graph (Google’s database of facts about people, places and organisations, which powers the knowledge panel you sometimes see beside search results).
The first choice is Organization or Person. Yoast’s own guidance is clear: a local business should choose Organization, and Person is for sites such as a personal blog or an artist’s portfolio. If you choose Person, Yoast merges the Person into the main identity piece and pulls details from that user’s WordPress profile, so the profile must be accurate.
For an Organization you can set:
When we audited Singapore SME sites built by different developers, we found the same pattern repeatedly: Site representation left on the default, the organisation name still showing the theme demo text or the developer’s company, and no logo uploaded. Every page on those sites was confidently telling Google the wrong thing about who owned it.
Fill this in before you touch anything else. It takes ten minutes and it fixes the foundation every other piece of the graph references. Then check that the name, logo and profiles agree with your GBP and your directory listings. Consistency across these sources is a core part of local SEO for Singapore businesses, and the schema layer should reinforce it rather than contradict it.
One more point that trips people up: Site representation describes the business as an Organization. It does not add an address, phone number or opening hours. Those are LocalBusiness properties, and free Yoast does not have fields for them.
The second place you control Yoast SEO structured data is the Schema tab, found in the Yoast meta box below the editor or in the Yoast sidebar. It lets you change how an individual page or post is described in the graph. You can also set the defaults for each content type in the Yoast settings, so every new page starts with sensible values.
Yoast’s help documentation lists the available options. For page types, these include Web Page (the default), Item Page, About Page, FAQ Page, QA Page, Profile Page, Contact Page, Medical Web Page, Collection Page, Checkout Page, Real Estate Listing and Search Results Page. For article types, the options include Article (the default for posts), Blog Post, Social Media Posting, News Article, Advertiser Content Article, Satirical Article, Scholarly Article, Tech Article and Report.
Here is how we recommend a typical Singapore service business uses them:
Do not overthink this tab. Changing a page type does not create a rich result (an enhanced search listing with stars, prices or images) by itself. It refines the description of what the page is, which helps Google and AI systems understand your site structure. The gains are real but modest.
Most agencies will tell you to change every page’s schema type to something more specific because “more schema is better”. That frequently backfires. A page labelled FAQ Page that has no visible questions, or a service page labelled Item Page when it is really a general landing page, creates markup that does not match the content. Google’s guidelines are explicit that structured data must describe what is visible on the page. Accurate and plain beats ambitious and wrong.
This is the gap that matters most for Singapore SMEs. Yoast’s own documentation for its Local SEO plugin says it builds on the base schema to add local business detail, such as addresses and opening hours, and that it extends the main Organization into a LocalBusiness when a primary location is set. Read the other way round, that tells you what free Yoast does not do: it does not turn your Organization into a LocalBusiness.
For a café, clinic, spa, tuition centre or contractor, LocalBusiness markup is where the useful local facts live: street address, postal code, telephone, opening hours, geo-coordinates, price range and a specific business type. Without it, a spa at a Dempsey Hill address and an online-only consultancy look identical in the graph. Both are just an Organization with a name and a logo.
| Schema layer | Free Yoast SEO | Yoast Local SEO add-on | Custom code via Yoast’s Schema API |
|---|---|---|---|
| Organization or Person identity | Yes, from Site representation | Yes, extended | Can modify |
| WebSite, WebPage, BreadcrumbList | Yes, automatic | Yes | Can modify or remove |
| Article and author Person on posts | Yes, automatic | Yes | Can modify |
| Page and article type per page | Yes, Schema tab | Yes | Can modify |
| LocalBusiness with specific sub-type | No | Yes, chosen business type | Yes, if you build it |
| Address, phone, opening hours, geo | No | Yes | Yes, if you build it |
| Multiple locations with branchOf links | No | Yes | Possible, more work |
| Richer Product, Offer, brand, seller | Not enriched (needs WooCommerce SEO add-on) | No | Via WooCommerce SEO product filters |
That table is built from Yoast’s developer and help documentation. The pattern is clear: free Yoast covers the first four rows thoroughly and stops there.
This is also why we are cautious when an owner says “Yoast handles our schema”. It handles the part of schema that says who you are. It does not handle the part that says where you are, when you are open and what kind of business you run, which is precisely what local searchers and the local pack (the map with three businesses that appears above organic results) depend on.
For non-medical beauty and wellness businesses, this gap is especially costly because customers search by treatment and location together. Our beauty SEO page explains why spas and salons win or lose on that local, treatment-specific layer.
Yoast sells add-ons that extend the free graph. Two matter for most Singapore businesses.
Yoast Local SEO. According to Yoast’s developer documentation, when you define a primary location, the plugin merges that location’s details into the main Organization to turn it into a LocalBusiness. The output in Yoast’s own example shows a combined type (Organization, Place and a specific type such as Dentist), plus a PostalAddress, telephone, opening hours, geo-coordinates and price range. Yoast’s guidance stresses picking a specific business type rather than a broad one. For businesses with several outlets, each location page can get its own LocalBusiness piece linked back to the main Organization with a branchOf property, which suits a chain of clinics or a café group with outlets in different malls.
Yoast’s site currently states that Local SEO is included with Yoast SEO Premium, and it also appears in other Yoast bundles. Plans change, so check Yoast’s site for current pricing and what each plan includes before you buy.
Yoast WooCommerce SEO. For online stores, Yoast’s documentation says this add-on changes product pages to an ItemPage, validates and enriches the Product piece, sets brand and manufacturer from your taxonomy settings, sets the seller to your Organization, and stitches offers, reviews and ratings into the graph. It can also add a merchant return policy. If you sell online, that is the difference between a product page Google can parse fully and one that is merely tolerated. Our ecommerce SEO services cover product schema as part of wider catalogue work.
The add-on route suits owners who want to manage everything in a dashboard without a developer. The trade-off is that you work within the fields the plugin offers. If your business type is unusual, or you need properties the add-on does not expose, you move to custom code.
When we have reviewed add-on setups, the most common failure was not the plugin. It was a primary location left undefined, so the business-type upgrade never happened, or opening hours that no longer matched the GBP after a change of hours.
If you have a developer, Yoast’s Schema API lets you change the graph without replacing it. Yoast publishes these hooks in its developer documentation, and they are stable enough that most WordPress developers in Singapore can work with them.
The main tools are:
Yoast also documents a development mode filter that pretty-prints the schema so it is easier to read while debugging, and recommends not leaving it on in production.
Why extend rather than add? Because the graph works through shared IDs. If a developer pastes a separate LocalBusiness block into the theme header, Google sees two entities: Yoast’s Organization and the hand-coded business, with nothing connecting them. Extending the Organization via the filter keeps one entity with one ID that every Article and WebPage already references.
In our experience, a developer who knows the Schema API can add business-type markup in a short piece of code, which suits a single-location business that does not need Local SEO’s location management. For a business with several outlets or frequent hours changes, the add-on is usually easier to maintain, because staff can update it without touching code. Either way, it is worth knowing what a scoped technical project involves; our pricing page shows how that work is packaged.
Our beauty SEO case study shows why the business-type layer matters. It documents a 5-month engagement with a day spa and wellness centre (non-medical) in Dempsey Hill, Singapore. The case study does not say which CMS or plugins the spa used, so we are not claiming this was a Yoast site. What it shows is what happens when the business-type layer is added as part of a full programme.
The starting position. The initial audit found no schema markup at all, a single “Treatments” page with no individual landing pages, a GBP with 17 reviews and 8 photos, and a mobile Lighthouse score (Google’s 0 to 100 rating of page speed and usability on a phone) of 46/100. The spa had 420 monthly organic visitors, 5 keywords on page 1 (brand only), was outside the top 10 in the local pack for key terms, and had ≈3 monthly bookings from organic search.
What was done in Phase 4, Schema and Technical Fixes (Months 2-4). SpaAndHealthClub and LocalBusiness schema were implemented sitewide, with FAQPage schema on all 8 treatment pages. Mobile Lighthouse was lifted from 46 to 74, and images were compressed and lazy-loaded. Rich results began appearing for treatment pages within 6 weeks of schema deployment.
The ending position at Month 5. The results came from the whole programme, not schema alone: Phase 1 GBP rebuild and photo programme, Phase 2 treatment landing pages, Phase 3 review velocity programme, Phase 4 schema and technical fixes, and Phase 5 local citations and seasonal content.
| Metric | Baseline | Month 5 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly organic visitors | 420 | 1,201 | +186% |
| Keywords ranking page 1 | 5 | 24 | +380% |
| GBP monthly views | 1,400 | 5,200 | +271% |
| GBP reviews | 17 | 74 | +335% |
| Local pack position | Outside top 10 | Top 3 | Improved |
| Mobile Lighthouse score | 46 / 100 | 74 / 100 | +28 pts |
| Monthly bookings from organic | ≈3 | 21 | +18 / month |
The lesson for Yoast users is about what the spa’s starting point would look like with default settings. A site running free Yoast with nothing else would have had an identity graph, but no business-type markup and none of the address, hours or treatment-level detail that Phase 4 added. That layer is the part you have to deliberately add, whether through an add-on, custom code or another method that keeps one connected entity.
Configuring Yoast SEO structured data is not a one-off task. Businesses change hours, move units, rebrand and add services, and the graph has to keep up.
Test with two tools. Google’s Rich Results Test shows which rich results a page is eligible for and flags errors. The Schema Markup Validator at schema.org checks that the markup is valid against the vocabulary, including types Google does not use for rich results. Run both on your homepage, one service page, one blog post and your contact page after any schema change.
Watch Google Search Console. Search Console (Google’s free tool showing how your site performs in search) reports structured data issues under its enhancement reports. If a report suddenly shows errors after a theme or plugin update, investigate before rankings are affected.
Know what Google has retired. Google stopped showing FAQ rich results in May 2026, completing a restriction that began in 2023. FAQPage markup is still valid schema and can stay on your pages, and Yoast’s FAQ block still outputs it, but you should no longer expect it to produce expandable questions in search results. Google also retired several other structured data types in 2025. LocalBusiness and Organization remain supported, which is another reason to prioritise the business-type layer over chasing display features.
Consider Schema Aggregation. Yoast introduced an opt-in feature called Schema Aggregation, which Yoast’s site says is included in the free plugin as well as its paid products. It exposes your site’s whole schema graph through a single endpoint (Yoast calls the output a schemamap) so AI systems can read it in one request, built in collaboration with Microsoft’s NLWeb project. It only reflects the schema you already have, so it amplifies a good graph and an incomplete one equally.
Recheck after business changes. New opening hours for Hari Raya or Chinese New Year, a move to a new unit, or a new outlet should trigger a schema check alongside your GBP update. If you run a small team without a developer on call, our small business SEO support is built around this kind of ongoing maintenance.
Field notes: In our beauty case study, the day spa in Dempsey Hill started with no schema markup at all and a single “Treatments” page. Phase 2 created 8 dedicated treatment landing pages, and Phase 4 then implemented SpaAndHealthClub and LocalBusiness schema sitewide plus FAQPage schema on all 8 treatment pages. Rich results began appearing for treatment pages within 6 weeks of schema deployment. The order matters: business-type markup was added once there were distinct treatment pages for it to describe, which is the same order we recommend for any Yoast site, identity first, then pages, then the business-type layer.
Yoast SEO structured data is a strong default for the identity layer. The connected graph of Organization or Person, WebSite, WebPage, Article and BreadcrumbList is better than most hand-built schema, and the free plugin delivers it with very little effort.
But a Singapore local business that stops at the defaults is described as a generic Organization. It is not marked up as a LocalBusiness, with no address, hours or specific business type. The real work is in three places: filling in Site representation properly, making sensible Schema tab choices page by page, and adding the business-type markup that free Yoast does not provide, through the Local SEO add-on or custom code that extends the existing graph. If you want to see how we approach that kind of work, our about page explains how we work with Singapore businesses.
The free Yoast SEO plugin outputs a connected schema graph in JSON-LD on every page. It includes an Organization or Person piece describing who owns the site, a WebSite piece, a WebPage piece for the current page, and usually a BreadcrumbList and ImageObject pieces. On single posts it adds an Article piece with an author Person. If you use Yoast’s FAQ or How-to blocks, it adds FAQPage or HowTo markup linked to those blocks.
No. Free Yoast describes your business as an Organization, using the details from the Site representation settings. Yoast’s documentation for its Local SEO add-on explains that the add-on extends the Organization into a LocalBusiness and adds address, opening hours and other local details. Without the add-on, you would need a developer to extend the Organization through Yoast’s Schema API, or another method that keeps one connected entity.
Choose Organization for any business, including sole proprietors who trade under a business name. Yoast’s own guidance says local businesses should choose Organization, while Person suits personal blogs or individual portfolios. If you choose Person, Yoast pulls details from a WordPress user profile, so that profile must be accurate. For most Singapore SMEs, Organization with a correct name, logo and social profiles is the right setting.
The Schema tab in the Yoast meta box or sidebar lets you change how an individual page or post is described in the graph. Page types include Web Page, About Page, Contact Page, FAQ Page, Collection Page, Item Page and Medical Web Page, among others. Article types include Article, Blog Post, News Article and Tech Article. You can also set defaults for each content type in Yoast’s settings.
Not directly. Changing a page type refines how Google understands the page, but it does not create a rich result on its own. The benefit is accuracy: an About page labelled About Page and a contact page labelled Contact Page help search engines map your site correctly. Avoid labelling pages with types that do not match their visible content, because markup that misrepresents a page goes against Google’s structured data guidelines.
Either works. The Local SEO add-on suits businesses that want to manage locations, opening hours and business type in a dashboard, and it handles multiple outlets with branchOf links. A developer using Yoast’s Schema API can extend the Organization with business-type markup for a single location. Yoast’s site lists Local SEO as included with Yoast SEO Premium; check Yoast’s site for current pricing and plan contents.
You can, but it is easy to end up with two disconnected entities: Yoast’s Organization and the other plugin’s LocalBusiness, each with a different ID. Google then has to work out whether they are the same business. The cleaner approach is a single graph, either by using Yoast’s own add-on, extending Yoast’s Organization with code, or switching Yoast’s schema off and letting one other system handle all of it.
No. Google stopped showing FAQ rich results in search in May 2026. Yoast’s FAQ block still outputs valid FAQPage markup, and Google has said the markup can stay on pages without causing problems, but you should not expect expandable questions to appear in search results. FAQ content is still useful for visitors and for search engines and AI systems trying to understand the page.
Schema Aggregation is an opt-in Yoast feature that exposes your site’s whole schema graph through a single endpoint, which Yoast calls a schemamap, so AI systems can read it in one request instead of crawling page by page. Yoast’s site says it is included in the free plugin and its paid products, and it was built in collaboration with Microsoft’s NLWeb project. It only reflects the schema you already have.
Run your key pages through Google’s Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator. Check that the Organization name, logo and social profiles match your Google Business Profile, and that there is only one main business entity in the graph. Then watch Google Search Console for structured data errors, especially after theme or plugin updates. Recheck whenever your address, opening hours or business name changes.
Not sure whether your site’s schema describes you as a local business or just a generic organisation? We can check your graph, your Site representation settings and your page types, and tell you plainly what is missing and how to fix it. Start with a free SEO audit, or get in touch if you would rather talk it through first.
Natalie leads SEO strategy at Singapore SEO Agency, helping local and regional businesses build organic search programmes that drive qualified leads. She specialises in technical SEO and content-led authority building for Singapore SMEs.
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