Schema markup in WordPress is structured data vocabulary from Schema.org that you embed in your HTML to tell search engines exactly what your content represents. Instead of Google guessing whether your page is a local business listing, a product page, or a how-to guide, schema explicitly labels the entity type, properties, and relationships. WordPress doesn't include schema out of the box beyond basic Article markup in some themes. You add it through plugins or custom code. Yoast SEO and Rank Math automatically inject JSON-LD scripts for articles, breadcrumbs, and organization info. Schema Pro and WP Schema let you map custom post types to schema types like Event, Recipe, Course, or FAQ. For ecommerce, WooCommerce plugins often add Product schema with price, availability, and review markup. The practical benefit is rich results: star ratings in search snippets, recipe cards with cook time, event dates in the knowledge panel, FAQ accordions directly in SERPs. These don't guarantee higher rankings, but they increase click-through rates when you do rank. A local Ottawa restaurant using LocalBusiness schema can surface hours, phone number, and review aggregate directly in the knowledge graph. Common schema types for WordPress sites include Article (blog posts), LocalBusiness (service pages), Product (WooCommerce), FAQ (support content), HowTo (tutorials), and BreadcrumbList (navigation). You validate output with Google's Rich Results Test or Schema Markup Validator to catch errors before deployment. At Ottawa SEO, we layer schema strategically—LocalBusiness on the homepage and contact page, Service schema on individual service pages, and Article markup on blog posts. We avoid over-marking or conflicting types on the same URL, which confuses crawlers. For complex sites like multi-location franchises or SaaS products, custom JSON-LD templates often outperform plugin defaults. The key is matching schema types to actual page intent, not just stuffing markup hoping for featured snippets that don't align with the content you're offering.