Rankmath doesn’t make it easy to add areaServed schema without location pages. Here’s how we did it.

One of our clients is a roofing contractor. Their website uses RankMath for their WordPress SEO—it’s our preferred SEO tool.

But, we recently ran into a problem. We weren’t able to add the areaServed schema to our client’s website without adding location pages through RankMath.

This article will discuss the areaServed schema type, outline the problem we ran into, and highlight our solution.

What is areaServed schema?

Schema.org describes the areaServed schema as “The geographic area where a service or offered item is provided.”

Along with a robust Google My Business (GMB) listing, the areaServed schema helps Google know the areas a business serves. These are both parts of the local SEO package we offer our clients.

Another critical benefit to including the areaServed schema on the website is that other search engines—who don’t have access to the GMB listing—use the areaServed schema specified in the website to know the areas where a business provides services.

RankMath doesn’t allow areaServed without locations

The problem we ran into has to do with the way RankMath sets up the LocalBusiness schema. In short, by navigating to the RankMath settings, then to the Titles & Meta tab, and finally to Local Seo and filling out the required fields, RankMath generates LocalBusiness schema and implements it on the homepage.

The roofing website in question already had LocalBusiness schema throughout the website, as provided by RankMath. 

But the issue we encountered was that there was no place to specify the areas served—the information that would go into the areaServed schema.

They have an article about how to Add Multiple areaServed Cities to your LocalBusiness Schema.

But this requires adding locations pages—we wanted the areaServed schema added without going through that process.

Adding areaServed in RankMath’s schema generator

The above article from RankMath did lay out the process we used when adding the areaServed schema to the home page and the locations page.

In a nutshell, the article outlines how to add the areaServed schema as a chunk within one of the standard schema templates. In the article’s case, the LocalBusiness schema. But this schema type is only accessible when using locations pages, and we didn’t want to go that route.

The starting point for getting the schema that needs editing is to grab it from the page source. Then, tweak it by adding the areaServed schema code and import it through RankMath’s schema generator. 

“areaServed”: [

{

“@type”: “City”,

“name”: “Toronto”,

“@id”: “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto”

},

{

“@type”: “City”,

“name”: “Aurora”,

“@id”: “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora,_Ontario”

},

{

“@type”: “City”,

“name”: “Oshawa”,

“@id”: “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshawa”

}

],

(The above is taken From RankMath’s article. The Wikipedia links defines the locations.)

At first, we tried adding the areaServed schema portion to the global site Organization schema made by RankMath. It broke our page’s schema—overwriting this schema isn’t possible since it’s generated by RankMath using the data from the fields in the Local SEO form.

But we realized that we could change the Service schema to suit our purposes. So, after making sure we added the Service schema through RankMath, we went to the page source and took the page’s schema—which had the LocalBusiness schema and the Service schema.

Note: It’s a good idea to delete the Service schema from your page after getting the schema from the page source. You’ll be making an altered copy with the same name, and having multiples can get confusing.

Then, in our text editor, we added the areaServed schema into the Service schema, after the “description” and before the “offers.” (To find the Service schema within the page schema, look for “@type”:” Service”)

After importing it into RankMath’s schema generator following the instructions from RankMath’s article, the generator identified the altered Service schema within the code. 

Clicking the “Use” button associated with the Service schema field gets you into the schema builder.

Our locations were there, specified as areaServed schema! We had to set the image URL (which was the same URL as the image id), and we deleted the “mainEntityOfPage” field (this is specified in other portions of the schema) before clicking save for this post.

With our new Service schema—which included areaServed schema—in place, we updated the post and tested it in Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. (Google’s Rich Results Test won’t work because Service schema isn’t detected in that service.)

Sure enough, our Service schema now included the areaServed schema!

Local SEO with Algorithmic Global

Adding the areaServed schema to a website is vital in letting Google (and other search engines) know the areas a company services. Together with GMB, this is a powerful tool for showing up high on the search results pages.

Getting the correct schema on your page is just one small part of local SEO, which is, in turn, a part of SEO in general. 

Give us a call or reach out via our contact page if you are interested in diving deep into your website’s local SEO. We specialize in lead-generation for service-based businesses but have clients in industries as varied as book publishing to marijuana. Let us know how we can help!