Basic Schema for Attorneys

Default User Headshot Alexander Darling | January 18, 2016

Have you ever seen a search result that comes with a little extra?

Sitelinks and knowledge graph rich snippets
The first result for “Mockingbird Marketing” has 6 other links in addition to the homepage. On the right are our address, phone number, and business hours.
Post date rich snippet
Blog posts show the date they were posted on the left-hand side before the text in the search result.

These “extra” pieces of information are called rich snippets, and appear when Google decides information is important enough to display directly in the SERPs. When rich snippets from your site appear in search results, they take up more space (blocking out competing search results) and increase the likelihood that a user will click to your site.

Google gets the information for this by looking at your site and identifying the important pieces. While it has been pretty successful, it’s best to help Google notice your website as much as you can. We do that using structured data, essentially a way of flagging information as important (“LOOK AT ME! I AM THE ADDRESS!”).

Schema Starter Pack

Google has documentation on what kinds of structured data it supports, but most categories aren’t applicable to attorneys (such as recipes and software apps). Three of these apply to lawyers, and we’ve included templates for them as part of a Schema “starter pack” that you can copy over to your website and fill in.

Legal Service

This displays your business information to Google and identifies you as a legal service. This is the most important piece of Schema to use. If you get anything from this blog post, it is that you should use Schema for your business information.

Previously this was the “Attorney” category, but now the official name is “LegalService”.

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/LegalService">
   <span itemprop="name">YOUR LAW FIRM NAME</span>
   <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress">
      <span itemprop="streetAddress">YOUR ADDRESS</span>
      <span itemprop="addressLocality">YOUR CITY</span>,
      <span itemprop="addressRegion">YOUR STATE</span>
      <span itemprop="postalCode">YOUR ZIP CODE</span>
   </div>
   <span itemprop="telephone">YOUR PHONE NUMBER</span>
</div>

Event

If you are attending, speaking at, or hosting an event.

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Event">
   <span itemprop="name">EVENT NAME</span>
   <span itemprop="image">EVENT IMAGE</span>
   <span itemprop="url">WEBPAGE FOR YOUR EVENT</span>
   <span itemprop="description">EVENT DESCRIPTION</span>
   <span itemprop="startDate">EVENT START DATE</span>
   <span itemprop="endDate">EVENT END DATE</span>
</div>

Videos

Marking up videos helps Google understand what information is associated with a video, and can help your videos show up in search results.

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/VideoObject">
   <span itemprop="name">VIDEO NAME</span>
   <span itemprop="about">VIDEO SUMMARY</span>
   <span itemprop="embedUrl">VIDEO URL</span>
   <span itemprop="dateCreated">DATE CREATED</span>
</div>

Resources and Further Reading

If you’re interested in expanding your knowledge of Schema, you should look into some other categories and check out some of the tools we’ve found useful.

 

 

How do you use Schema? Have any success stories? Let us know in the comments!

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