STRUCTURED DATA · SEO GLOSSARY
Professional Service Schema
Schema.org structured data for licensed professional service providers — including Attorney (legal), Physician (medical), Dentist (dental), AccountingService (financial), FinancialService, and other LocalBusiness subtypes for regulated professionals. These types add profession-specific properties to the LocalBusiness foundation that enable knowledge panel features and local search relevance for professional service queries.
Definition
Professional service schema encompasses the schema.org types used by licensed, credentialed, or regulated professional service providers: **Legal**: `Attorney`, `Notary`, `LegalService` — with `areaServed` (jurisdictions), `knowsAbout` (practice areas). **Medical**: `Physician`, `MedicalClinic`, `Hospital`, `Dentist` — with `medicalSpecialty`, `availableService` (medical specialties and procedures offered). **Financial**: `FinancialService`, `AccountingService`, `InsuranceAgency`, `BankOrCreditUnion` — with `areaServed` and service type declarations. **Other regulated services**: `RealEstateAgent`, `Optician`, `Veterinary` — each with relevant LocalBusiness properties plus type-specific additions. Common properties across all professional service types: **`address` + `geo`**: precise physical location for local search ranking. **`openingHoursSpecification`**: office hours for "open now" eligibility. **`areaServed`**: geographic coverage beyond the office address proximity. **`aggregateRating`**: verified client/patient reviews. **Individual practitioner schema**: `Person` JSON-LD for individual professionals within a practice — with `worksFor` (pointing to the practice entity), credential and education markup (`alumniOf`, `memberOf` for professional associations), and `knowsAbout` for specialisation. Professional service schema has higher E-E-A-T requirements than generic business schema because these businesses operate in YMYL categories where credentials and authority signals carry direct ranking weight.
Why it matters for SEO
Professional service schema is the technical implementation of E-E-A-T signals — it makes credential and expertise claims machine-readable rather than only visible to human readers. Google\'s quality evaluation systems can parse `alumniOf`, `memberOf` (bar/medical association), and `knowsAbout` signals from schema alongside page content to evaluate expertise claims. For regulated professions in competitive local markets, the combination of correct professional service schema + individual practitioner `Person` schema + credential disclosure in page content creates the strongest available E-E-A-T signal stack.
How DeepSEOAnalysis checks this
DeepSEOAnalysis identifies the professional service type from schema present on the page and validates type-specific properties. For `Attorney`: `areaServed`, `knowsAbout`, bar association `memberOf`. For `Physician`/`Dentist`: `medicalSpecialty`, `availableService`. For `FinancialService`: `areaServed`, service type. Missing type-specific properties beyond the basic LocalBusiness fields are flagged as professional service gaps rather than generic structured data errors.
Useful tools and resources
GLOSSARY
Related terms
technical
YMYL SEO
SEO applied to Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) content — pages where inaccurate information could cause significant financial, physical, legal, or safety harm. YMYL pages face elevated E-E-A-T requirements from Google\'s quality evaluation framework: medical, legal, financial, and safety content must demonstrate credible expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness signals.
Read definition →structured data
LocalBusiness Schema
LocalBusiness schema is a Schema.org structured data type that describes a local business — name, address, phone, hours, geo coordinates, and more — enabling rich Knowledge Panel and Local Pack displays in Google Search. It is the foundation of structured data for local SEO.
Read definition →onpage
E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness)
Google\'s quality framework for evaluating content — especially important for YMYL (Your Money, Your Life) topics like health, finance, and legal.
Read definition →structured data
areaServed (Schema Property)
The schema.org property on LocalBusiness (and subtypes including RealEstateAgent, ServiceBusiness) that specifies the geographic areas a business serves — as a list of Place objects, AdministrativeArea objects, or a GeoShape. Critical for service-area businesses and multi-location businesses where coverage extends beyond immediate physical proximity.
Read definition →See how your site scores on Professional Service Schema.
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