Foundational definitions
Medical schema markup: comprehensive guide
Practice and organization schemas
MedicalOrganization is the top-level schema for healthcare entities. It supports properties like medicalSpecialty, available services, and affiliations with other organizations. Use this when describing your practice as an institution.[2]
MedicalBusiness adds business-oriented properties to medical entities – opening hours, accepted payment methods, and geographic service area. MedicalClinic, Hospital, and Pharmacy are all subtypes that inherit these properties.[3]
For most private practices, MedicalClinic is the best fit. It combines the medical specificity of MedicalOrganization with the local business features that enable Google Maps and local pack results.[3]
Multi-specialty practices should use MedicalOrganization at the organization level with individual department pages using more specific subtypes like MedicalClinic or specific practice schemas.
Provider and credential schemas
Physician schema describes individual healthcare providers with properties for medical specialty, credential, hospital affiliation, and available service. Each provider on your team should have their own Physician markup.[4]
Use the credential property to list board certifications, medical degrees, and specialty qualifications. This information feeds directly into Google's understanding of your team's expertise – a key E-E-A-T signal.
Connect providers to your practice entity using the memberOf property. This creates explicit entity relationships that help search engines and AI tools understand your organizational structure.[1]
Condition and treatment schemas
MedicalCondition describes health conditions with properties for symptoms, causes, risk factors, and treatment options. Each condition page on your site should include this markup with links to your treatment pages.[1]
MedicalProcedure and its subtypes (TherapeuticProcedure, DiagnosticProcedure, SurgicalProcedure) describe the treatments your practice offers. Include how the procedure is performed, preparation requirements, and expected outcomes.[1]
The possibleTreatment property on MedicalCondition and the usedToDiagnose property on MedicalProcedure create bidirectional links between conditions and treatments. These relationships strengthen your entity graph.
Rich result schemas for healthcare
FAQPage schema structures question-and-answer content for rich results. Google limits FAQ rich results to well-known, authoritative government and health websites – making this an exclusive advantage for medical practices.[5]
Article schema with author information helps Google associate your content with qualified medical professionals. Include the author's name, credentials, and link to their profile.[6]
BreadcrumbList schema helps Google understand your site hierarchy. For healthcare sites with deep content structures (practice > specialty > condition > treatment), breadcrumbs improve both crawling and display in search results.[6]
Key takeaways
- Use MedicalClinic for private practices – it combines medical and local business features
- Physician schema with credentials feeds E-E-A-T signals directly to Google
- MedicalCondition and MedicalProcedure create entity relationships between content
- Healthcare sites retain exclusive access to FAQ rich results
- Connect all schemas with relationship properties for a complete entity graph
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about this topic.
MedicalOrganization describes healthcare institutions with medical-specific properties like specialties and affiliations. MedicalBusiness adds business properties like opening hours and payment methods. MedicalClinic is a subtype of both, making it the best choice for most private practices since it combines medical and business features.
Related concepts
Foundational definitions
Medical schema markup
Schema markup is a structured data vocabulary that helps search engines understand your content beyond the words on the page. For healthcare practices, medical schema types communicate your services, provider credentials, treatment details, and clinical expertise in a format that both search engines and AI systems can reliably parse and cite.
Foundational definitions
Healthcare structured data implementation guide
Structured data tells search engines exactly what your practice does, where it is, and who works there – in a language they can parse directly. For healthcare sites, proper JSON-LD implementation can unlock rich results, improve local visibility, and make your content citable by AI tools.
Foundational definitions
Entity SEO explained
When patients search for "orthopedic surgeon near me," Google isn't just matching keywords anymore – it's looking for known, trusted entities. If your practice isn't established as an entity in Google's Knowledge Graph, you're invisible to both traditional search and AI tools like ChatGPT.
Sources
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