Yoast Schema Markup: What It Generates, What It Misses, and How to Fix Both

Yoast SEO is installed on over 13 million WordPress sites. When you install it, it starts generating structured data for you automatically — which sounds like a solved problem, but the reality is more complicated. Yoast generates a solid schema foundation, but it has real gaps, makes assumptions you may not have configured, and can conflict with other plugins. This guide tells you exactly what Yoast is doing with schema, what it gets right, what it gets wrong, and how to fill in the holes.

1. What Yoast Generates Automatically

Yoast builds what it calls a "schema graph" — an interconnected set of schema types that link to each other via @id references. This is actually the right approach. Instead of loose, disconnected schema blocks, Yoast creates a structured hierarchy where your WebSite relates to your Organization, and each WebPage or Article relates to both of those.

On every page, Yoast outputs:

• WebSiteDefines your site name and URL. Enables sitelinks searchbox if you have Yoast's search settings configured.
• Organization or PersonSet in Yoast → General → Site Representation. This is your brand entity. Yoast links it to your logo, social profiles, and every page on the site.
• WebPageApplied to every page type. For posts it becomes Article or BlogPosting, for products it becomes ItemPage, for tag archives it stays WebPage.
• BreadcrumbListGenerated automatically using your WordPress category and permalink structure. One of the most useful things Yoast does.

On blog posts and pages, Yoast adds Article or BlogPosting schema with the post title, date published, date modified, author, and publisher. On WooCommerce product pages (with Yoast WooCommerce SEO), it adds Product and Offer schema. On category pages and archives, it adds breadcrumbs.

2. Setting Up Yoast Schema Correctly — the Settings Most People Skip

1. Site Representation (Organization or Person)

Go to Yoast SEO → General → Site Representation. This is where you tell Yoast whether your site represents an Organisation or a Person. Most businesses should choose Organisation. Add your organisation name exactly as it appears on your Google Business Profile. Upload your logo — Yoast uses this as the logo in all generated schema.

2. Author profiles

Yoast generates Person schema for each post author, but only if the author has a complete WordPress user profile. Go to Users → Profile for each author and fill in their biographical info and — critically — their website URL. For authors who publish health, legal, or financial content, also link to their LinkedIn and professional profiles via the social media fields. This builds the E-E-A-T signals Google cares about.

3. Article type per post

On each individual post, Yoast lets you set the article type in the Yoast SEO → Schema block in the post editor sidebar. By default it uses Article or BlogPosting depending on your settings. If you publish news, change relevant posts to NewsArticle — this is required for Top Stories eligibility. If you publish technical documentation, use TechArticle.

4. Page type per page

For static pages (Contact, About, Services), Yoast lets you set the page type. The About page should be set to AboutPage. Contact should be ContactPage. The homepage often gets WebPage when it should be the entity anchor for your Organisation — check this in the homepage's Yoast schema settings.

3. Where Yoast Falls Short

4. Adding Custom JSON-LD Alongside Yoast

Yoast does not prevent you from adding custom JSON-LD. You can add additional schema blocks on top of what Yoast generates. The key rule is to avoid duplicating the same type on the same page — two Article blocks on the same post page will confuse Google.

The cleanest way to add custom schema that Yoast does not cover is to use wp_head in your theme's functions.php, or the "Insert Headers and Footers" plugin to inject JSON-LD into specific page templates:

// functions.php — add Event schema to pages with a specific template
function add_event_schema() {
  if ( is_page_template( 'template-event.php' ) ) {
    $schema = array(
      '@context' => 'https://schema.org',
      '@type'    => 'Event',
      'name'     => get_the_title(),
      'startDate' => get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), '_event_start', true ),
      'location'  => array(
        '@type' => 'Place',
        'name'  => get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), '_event_venue', true ),
      ),
    );
    echo '<script type="application/ld+json">'
      . wp_json_encode( $schema, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE )
      . '</script>';
  }
}
add_action( 'wp_head', 'add_event_schema' );

5. Checking What Yoast Is Actually Outputting

Do not assume Yoast has everything set up correctly just because you have installed it. Many sites have Yoast configured incorrectly for years without realising. Here is how to audit what it is actually outputting:

6. Yoast Free vs Yoast Premium — Schema Differences

Frequently Asked Questions