MedicalWebPage and clinical content markup

Schema.org includes a substantial medical vocabulary. Most clinic sites either ignore it entirely and mark everything as Article, or apply it indiscriminately to pages that are marketing copy. Both are avoidable, and the middle position is straightforward once the types are understood.

MedicalWebPage

MedicalWebPage describes a page whose content is medical. It is a subtype of WebPage and adds properties that matter for clinical content.

• about: the condition, procedure or entity the page concerns.
• medicalAudience: who the page is written for, typically Patient.
• specialty: the medical specialty the content belongs to.
• aspect: which aspect is covered, for example treatment or diagnosis.
• lastReviewed and reviewedBy: when a clinician reviewed it and who.

Those last two are the most valuable and the most abused. They assert that a named clinician reviewed the page on a date. Use them only where that happened, because it is a checkable claim about a real registered person.

MedicalCondition

Where a page is about a condition rather than a treatment, describe the condition as the subject using MedicalCondition. It carries properties for signs and symptoms, causes, possible treatments and risk factors. Populate only what the page actually covers, because the guidelines require markup to represent visible content.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "MedicalWebPage",
  "url": "https://example.co.uk/conditions/melasma",
  "name": "Melasma: assessment and treatment options",
  "inLanguage": "en-GB",
  "lastReviewed": "2026-06-04",
  "medicalAudience": {
    "@type": "MedicalAudience",
    "audienceType": "Patient"
  },
  "about": {
    "@type": "MedicalCondition",
    "name": "Melasma",
    "associatedAnatomy": {
      "@type": "AnatomicalStructure",
      "name": "Skin"
    },
    "possibleTreatment": {
      "@type": "MedicalTherapy",
      "name": "Topical therapy"
    }
  },
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://example.co.uk/#clinic"
  }
}

MedicalProcedure

MedicalProcedure describes a clinical procedure: how it is performed, what preparation is needed, what follow-up involves and the body location. For a clinic treatment page this is often a more accurate description of the subject than a generic product or service type.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "MedicalProcedure",
  "name": "Excision of a benign skin lesion",
  "url": "https://example.co.uk/treatments/lesion-removal",
  "procedureType": "https://schema.org/SurgicalProcedure",
  "bodyLocation": "Skin",
  "preparation": "A consultation and assessment is required before the procedure is booked.",
  "followup": "A wound check is arranged, and histology results are discussed at a follow-up appointment.",
  "howPerformed": "The lesion is removed under local anaesthetic and sent for histological examination.",
  "provider": {
    "@id": "https://example.co.uk/#clinic"
  }
}

Take care with anything approaching a claim of outcome. UK advertising rules apply to what a clinic publishes about treatments, and a structured data property is a published claim in the same way a sentence is.

Physician and the person layer

Physician describes an individual practitioner and supports specialty, affiliation, employer and identifiers. Where a practitioner appears on a public register, link the register entry with sameAs. Where the register publishes a reference number, an identifier property with a labelled propertyID states it precisely.

This matters beyond markup. The GMC standards govern how registered doctors present themselves and their services, and the structured data should reflect the same care as the visible biography.

MedicalClinic and organisation types

MedicalClinic is a subtype of both MedicalOrganization and LocalBusiness, which is why it works for a clinic that is simultaneously a healthcare provider and a local business. Where the business is regulated, the registration is worth stating and linking, and in England the CQC register provides a stable public record to point at.

Where restraint is the right answer

• A page selling a treatment with no clinical information is not a MedicalWebPage. It is a service page.
• A blog post about clinic news is an Article.
• Do not populate symptom, cause and risk properties the page does not discuss, however tempting the completeness looks.
• Do not claim reviewedBy for a clinician who has not read the page.
• Do not assert a specialty the clinic does not hold.

Audience and reading level

Setting medicalAudience to Patient states that the content is written for patients rather than clinicians. That is a useful distinction for any system deciding whether a page is appropriate to surface for a lay question, and it is one of the cheapest properties to add correctly.

Validating medical markup

The Schema Markup Validator checks vocabulary correctness beyond the subset Google displays, which matters here because much of the medical vocabulary produces no rich result. Absence of a rich result is not evidence the markup is unused: it is a description of the page for any system that parses it, and clarity is the objective.

Keeping clinical markup current

Clinical content should carry a review cycle anyway, for reasons that have nothing to do with search. Tie the markup to it: when a clinician reviews the page, the lastReviewed date and the reviewedBy reference are updated in the same action. That way the markup remains a true statement rather than a fossil of a review that happened three years ago.