This is a marketing guide for orthopedic administrators and marketing leads. It says nothing about clinical quality, and no practice is named.
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Structured data, often called schema markup, is a block of code on a page that states plainly who you are, where you are and how to reach you. Visitors never see it. Search engines read it. On November 1, 2026 I ran the same checks on 21 orthopedic homepages, and 10 had no local business or medical structured data in the page source.
The wider results are in my homepage study. This page explains the one gap.
What it does
A search engine can usually work out your address from the page text, but it has to guess. Structured data removes the guess. It states your practice name, address, phone number, hours and website in a format built for machines, and it helps Google match your site to your business listing.
It does not guarantee a higher ranking and it does not produce rich results by itself. It reduces confusion, which matters most for practices with several offices.
Which types fit an orthopedic practice
Schema.org, the shared vocabulary behind this markup, includes types for local and medical businesses. The ones most relevant here are:
- LocalBusiness, the general type for a business with a physical location.
- MedicalClinic, for a clinic.
- Physician, for an individual doctor’s page.
Choose the most specific type that is true for the page. A location page for one office describes that office. A surgeon’s bio page describes that surgeon.
The fields worth filling in
- Name of the practice or office
- Full address
- Phone number
- Opening hours
- The website address
- A link to your Google Business Profile and other official profiles
- The medical specialty
Every value must match what is visible on the page and on your listing. A mismatch causes the confusion you are trying to remove, as I describe in my review of orthopedic location pages.
⚡ 2-minute scorecard · instant result
Is your orthopedic practice website turning searches into booked consults?
Answer 5 quick questions. Get your score + the top fixes, free.
1. Can a new patient request an appointment from a phone in under a minute?
2. Is every phone number on your site a tap-to-call link?
3. Do your procedure pages name the surgeons who perform them and show patient reviews?
4. Does each office have its own page with hours, phone and the surgeons who work there?
5. Do you track new-patient requests from the first click to a kept consult?
Reviews need care
Do not mark up reviews you wrote or collected about your own practice and expect star results in Google. Google has rules about which review markup is eligible. Follow its review guidelines, and leave reviews out of the markup if you are not sure.
How to add it
Most WordPress sites can use a plugin or the SEO plugin already installed. The code is usually JSON-LD placed in the page head. Ask whoever builds your site to add it for each office page and each surgeon page.
How to test it
- Open Google’s Rich Results Test or the Schema Markup Validator.
- Enter your homepage address.
- Confirm the type, address, phone and hours match the page.
- Fix errors first. Treat warnings as optional.
- Repeat for each office page after any change.
Pair this with a clean Google Business Profile, since the two should describe the same practice in the same words.
How I ran this, and its limits
- Sample: 21 orthopedic practice homepages in 14 US states, checked on November 1, 2026. A hand-picked sample, not a random or national one.
- What I checked: whether the page source held local business or medical structured data. I did not test whether any markup was valid or complete.
- What I did not measure: rankings or traffic. A practice may also have added markup since I looked.
Want your markup checked?
I will record a short free walkthrough of how your site and listings describe your practice, with the three fixes I would make first. You do not need a call to get it, and the fixes are yours to keep. Request a free audit.
