Good morning internet fans! It’s Ryan Perry with Simple Biz Support. Today is Thursday therefore, it is… I don’t even know what it is, oh, it’s Internet Marketing Thursday that’s what it is. I was going to start introducing my company name again and thats not what today is. Today is January 22nd, and as usual I have the beautiful and talented Virginie Dorn with Business Website Center on the other end. Good Morning, Virginie.

Virginie Dorn: Well good morning Ryan, happy Thursday it’s almost…

RP: Happy Thursday.

VD: Yeah time flies, it’s almost…

RP: It does. I was going to say, I’ve… Well, you know Mickey with the Referral Institute and so, we were talking yesterday and he’s like, “You know how many people started out the new year going, ‘Okay here’s my goals, here’s my plans, this is what I’m going to get done’ and then you look at your watch and your like, ‘Oh my goodness it’s almost the end of January already.’ You’ve got 11 months to figure out what your goals and plans are, and so you got to start attacking those things now, if you’re going to succeed and be even more successful this year.”

VD: Yes, I agree.

RP: One of the ways that you can attack and be more aggressive is to build schema code into your website and we talked about schema code last week, kind of in real broad general terms, we’re going to get a little geeky today. We’re going to get a little technical. We don’t want to scare anybody, so we’re going to give you a great resource that’s going to help you out with schema code. But if you could quickly, for those people that didn’t see last week’s episode, just real basically what is schema and why is it important in a nutshell?

VD: Sure, my pleasure. Schema is a code that you put onto your website that is looked at by search engines. It’s only purpose is for search engines company like Google, Yahoo, Bing. It has no other purpose. So, it’s important that you have it on your website especially since it has been recommended by Google and other major search engine companies. So again, it’s a piece of coding that sometimes in some templates or a platform type website like WordPress, there might be a plugin that will not allow you to enter schema without knowing coding. If you have a custom hard coded website, then you may need to ask your webmaster about schema, which is S-C-H-E-M-A. So it’s very important. There are tons of schema code types available nowadays. And today, we’re just going to focus on only one which is called Organization, and the most commonly used and also the most important one for any website of any type of industries.

RP: Okay. Perfect and just to clarify why this is important for business owners, especially a small business owner, that doesn’t really have the budget to compete at the same level as a larger business with their internet marketing, is that since schema code is specifically designed for websites with easier for the… I’m losing my words today. It’s easier for the search engines to understand what your website is about. Therefore, it should help with ranking. The nice thing is, schema is relatively static in the sense that once you create it and it’s there, it’s done. The only caveat to that is they are coming out with new schema code for different types of content on a regular basis. So, there may need to be some updates depending on what industry you’re in. Would that be correct?

VD: That is absolutely correct.

RP: Okay, perfect. So, you wanted to talk about organizational schema code. So now, we’re actually talking about a specific type of code that you can place into your website. Is that correct?

VD: That is correct. Schema codes have what we call types, a very specific name. This one is called Organization, singular. And organization type of schema code is for not just non-profit organization, but also for school, clubs, corporations, businesses of any legal structures. So again, just your business, non profit or for profit will need a schema code named Organization. In terms of the… Go ahead.

RP: Can you give me… I’m sorry. Could you give me some examples of what the different codes might be?

VD: Oh.

RP: Would it be like… I mean, you, obviously there’s profit, non-profit, but I mean are we talking like, attorney versus night club versus movie theater versus restaurant. Is that what we’re talking about?

VD: Most types are even more in depth and that’s above and beyond the organization schema code. So, the organization schema code is primarily who you are, what kind of entity you are, where you’re located, what’s your contact information, who funded the organization or the company. Perhaps how many employees you have. Really a general overview of your company or organization. That’s pretty much all that the schema Organization does. If you want to go in more depth like for attorneys, then it’s a different type of schema code you need to add.

RP: Okay. The reason I guess where I was confused, and because I am not a coder. You do not want me coding your website. I just think organization and it’s a type of organization, but it’s really kinda general overview of what this company is about, because you said, you mentioned like employees, the type of organization, I think you said when it was founded. So it’s almost kind of like a history, a brief history or overview of the organization?

VD: Yes. I’m going to do a quick screen share.

RP: Okay.

VD: I’m going to give you the different types of attributes.

RP: Okay and this screen share, this is the website that you were talking about earlier, correct?

VD: Actually, this one is the official schema.org website which dictates the code for everywhere in the world, for every website. So, this is the organization schema. And as you can see within the code organization, there is lots of what we call attributes. So, address, brand, department, email, employee, event, fax number, the founder, when it was founded, the legal name, the location, logo, member of, like all your professional affiliation, who owns it, tax ID, telephone. So, as you can see, it’s very similar to Google Places…

RP: A lot of information.

VD: Yeah, so you can go… So, that is just one type of schema code. So, as I scroll down you can see within that code, there’s lot of mini codes that can be…

RP: Right. I think you just scared everybody though. They’re just… The eyes glazed over and they went, “Aah!” So, the big question is, if I’m not a programmer, I’m on a budget, is there like an easy way to get the schema code, so I can just copy and paste it into my website?

VD: Yes. So, there’s a bunch of little new websites that keep coming up that prepare the schema code for you based on the information you enter. It doesn’t require your coding, but it puts out very clean code. So, that one I really like ’cause it’s easy to use for my client. It’s called schema-creator.org, and you can go directly to organization.php. So again, we’re looking at the organization code. So, that page is this way. On the right, it will output the code for you. On the left, you just answer the information. So, very briefly, from the drop down, it tells you the different types that are currently available. And just remember, they’re adding new types every single day, so it might not be fully updated but that’s good enough for now. It’s better this than nothing. So, we’re going to pick corporation. Let’s say we want to do ABC Corp. You put the name of your organization. You can put your URL which is the domain name for your company. A description, “New website design,” something like this. You can do the address. Then, we put the city. As you can see, so far it doesn’t require you to know any coding whatsoever.

RP: Right. But I see the code on the right-hand side is changing.

VD: Yes. So, this is the basic schema code you need to have on your website. And typically, we recommend to put that code in the footer, that way it’s available on every single page of your site. So again, there’s one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight… About 10 fields. Those are the basics that everybody should have. And then, this code is what gets copied on the footer or it could be placed anywhere.

RP: Right. And because the code is tagged as being schema code, as Google and Bing and Yahoo are going through and indexing your site, when those little bots are going through, it sees the code and now it can say, “Okay, I know exactly what this website is about, because you’ve told me what it’s about.”

VD: Yes. You see this is the beginning of a schema code here. Hope it highlights everything. Let’s see if I can do this. At the very top, it tells us, “http: //schema.org/corporation.” This is the indicator Google is looking for. Right away it tells him that that section of coding is schema, and it’s going to tell him everything it needs to know about the organization or the company.

RP: Alright, very cool. Now, for those business… Now, that’s something you would have to create. You’d have to… I think creating it is very simple, copying it is very simple, but where you place it… You said in the footer, that could be a little technical for some people. If they have a WordPress site, do you know if there is a plugin or do you have a recommendation? I know you like to custom code.

VD: Yeah, I’m pretty sure there is a plugin on WordPress and Joomla and Drupal for schema code. If there is not, I’m… I’ve told everybody out there, there’s a good webmaster, that could create one, that would be great. But I’m pretty sure there is a plugin. You might have to pay for it since it’s fairly new, and that should work similarly than that webpage where you can just enter your information, and it will create the code for you, again without you needing to know any type of HTML coding.

RP: Alright, very cool. I’m just trying to think. Go ahead, takeover.

RP: Virtually, this is beyond my… I mean, I understand the basics of schema. This is something that you love to deal with being a programmer, and so my… I’m just kinda… The eyes are glazing over. I’m like, “That was really fun.”

VD: Well, that’s an important point in a way, your reaction to it. ‘Cause as a site owner, I don’t expect the person to know about schema or understand how it works and how it needs to be coded and all the new attributes and all the 100 types of codes within each organization type. But you should know the name, and then refer back to your webmaster and tell them you want to add organization-type schema code on the footer of your site. If your webmaster doesn’t know what schema is, you’re in really bad shape. So, you need to hire someone else, because again, this has become common and very basic for any web designer out there. So they should know what to do, how to do it well, and quickly for you. And truly, on their part to add the code, you’re looking at maybe an hour of work maximum and that’s about it. So if they try to charge you lots of money for a simple job like this, red flag.

RP: Right, right. And of course if you’re not really sure, maybe you don’t have a webmaster that you’re happy with, Virginie Dorn is my go-to person at this website Petaluma, feel free to look for her or you can also look her up at, is it petalumawebsite.com?

VD: Correct. Petalumawebsite.com you’ll see our corporate site. We can put schema code on every website, even those we have not designed, even if it’s platform based website like with WordPress, that’s not a problem. We can do it well and quickly and efficiently for you. So never hesitate to call, we’re very nice too, I’m not sure if it matters anymore.

RP: Oh, I think it matters. If you want to attract the right type of clientele it does matter, definitely. Alright perfect. Well, unless you have anything else to say about schema code today I think our time is up.

VD: Okay. Next week we’ll try to talk about something more exciting.

RP: Alright, sounds good. As always, Virginie, I really appreciate your time and energy that you put into these weekly episodes and sharing the knowledge that you’re passionate about as a coder. It’s a rare find to find people like you out there, I really do appreciate it.

VD: You’re very welcome, my pleasure.

RP: Alright. Take care, we’ll talk next week.

VD: Goodbye.

RP: Bye.