Answering Your Website Schema Questions With Terry Samuels

Terry Samuels Is Back To Talk About Some Basic Website Schema Questions

In this episode, Jesse talks listener questions with returning guest, Schema expert Terry Samuels! This conversation aims to answer your website schema questions. Questions include whether you should reverse engineer competitor Schema, how to use hashtags in url Schema, and more! This is an excellent opportunity to learn more about an important ranking factor in SEO and to clear up the potential mystery behind this tool! Mr. Samuels will be a recurring guest on the show, so don’t think you missed your opportunity to ask questions! Check out our question form at localseotactics.com/schema to leave a question for future episodes!

Thank you for listening, and enjoy the show!

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What you’ll learn

  • Where to look for “scraping” tools for reverse-engineering Schema from other sites
  • What tools to use to find errors in your Schema
  • When to remove certain pieces of Schema, and when to leave them in

Transcript for Answering Your Website Schema Questions With Terry Samuels – 98;

Caleb Baumgartner: Welcome to Local SEO Tactics, where we bring you tips and tricks to get found online. I am producer Caleb Baumgartner here with a Q&A episode with returning guests, schema expert, Terry Samuels. Jesse and Terry take a dive into listener questions and give you excellent tips on tools to use to improve your schema and compare it against your competitors.

If you’re curious about schema and have questions for Terry, let us know at localSEOtactics.com/schema. Terry will be a recurring guest, so the door is open for more questions. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.

Jesse Dolan: All right. Welcome back to Local SEO Tactics, where we bring you tips and tricks to get found online. I’m your host, Jesse Dolan here today with Terry Samuels again. How’s it going, Terry?

Terry Samuels: Good. How are you?

Jesse Dolan: Doing great. Everybody, I’ll just mention, and Terry before I record, I’m not going to give the big edification bio on who Terry is. We’re looking to have Terry on as a regular guest talking about schema. I will say, Terry, you’re the schema guru, I don’t know if there’s a better title for you than that right now, but that’s what I keep calling you to everybody. If anybody-

Terry Samuels: It’s a passion, I think, more than anything. I like to challenge it.

Jesse Dolan: Yeah. Well, it’s an area you got to be passionate about, otherwise you’re going to sit there and just rot your eyeballs for a few days, looking at the code and looking at the matrix. So if anybody does want to catch up though, I got to pull it up here. We had a previous episode. Or I should say session with Terry we broken into two episodes. You can go back and check out Terry on episode 76, part one and 77 part two, where we really kind of give a nickel tour about what schema is and everything else.

In that episode, we also talked about Terry’s going to be coming back in the future, doing multiple episodes to dive a little deeper into schema. This was the first one. So everybody out there, a bunch of you sent in questions. If anybody else, after this episode wants to dive in and ask some questions that Terry will answer in the future, go to localSEOtactics.com. Go down to the bottom, clicking the button for schema and just send your question in.

I’ve got four of them here today, terry, I’m going to throw at you. Gave them to you ahead of time. Full disclosure to everybody. Terry’s a smart guy, but I’m not going to be putting him on the spot to answer these, so I kind of curated these as well. Some of you had kind of overlapping questions, so I kind of paraphrase some of these. So Terry, we’ll just dive right in and get the genius off the top here for you.

For everybody too, this is kind of a basic question and answer kind of a schema for newbs here, starting at the basic level. I think we’ll get more advanced as we go with Terry through future episodes here, but that’s the flavor we’re going to give today. So just diving right in for schema.

Terry, first question here says, “If I want to do local business Schema on my site/page, should I copy a competitors and reverse engineer it or should I use an online schema generator tool to create this, or a plugin/where do I start?” Right? With local business Schema. So what’s your take on that?

Terry Samuels: Yeah, there’s a couple of different ways you can do it. I started kind of like what you mentioned in the beginning. I started scraping my competitor. So, and you can Google out there schema scrapers. There’s all kinds of tools out there that you can put a URL in and basically it’ll show you what schema’s there. The only thing I’d caution you on is make sure it’s not a schemer that you can build with a plugin.

So Rank Math, excuse me. You’ve got Rank Math and SEO Press. We actually use SEO Press Pro. They all have a schema tool inside there. So those schema tools are the ones that we just consider basic. It’s better than nothing, but it’s not something you can hang your hat on to actually have it be, improve you in different aspects of your website.

So, I started by scraping my competitors and then I just started@schema.org and seeing what all the different areas I can put inside the schema. That’s basically how I got started building templates. So if I was building a local business schema, I would try to find one to start with out there. You can even go to schema.org and they have some examples at the bottom.

Pick the one that has the most, even if it doesn’t apply to you or not because the whole idea is to add in the things that the schema allows you to add in and then not get warnings or errors when you put it in the checker tool, because some things in the categories in schema.org, some things are mandatory and some things aren’t mandatory. Well, nothing tells you what is mandatory and what is not mandatory.

Matter of fact, you have another question in here. We’ll talk a little bit more about that, but to build it out, you just basically go out and even start at schema.org, search local business, go down to local business on the very bottom and then copy and paste the JSON-LD into a text file. And then go back up and start looking about all the different variables you can add in it, because you can add in aggregate rating. You can add in reviews, you can add in all this stuff.

And then what I do typically is as I’m building this text file, I’ll build it out, I’ll check it in the schema checker. If it passes, I’ll save it and then I’ll start adding things to it. And I typically do it very small amounts because you don’t want to sit there and work in a two hour file and then check it and now all of a sudden you’ve got 10 errors and you don’t even know where to start.

So take little bits at a time. So, your geo location. You can do the geo categories so put that in the text file and make sure that that’s approved. And so, and it’s just process and as you build this thing out for local business, the nice thing about it is if you’re an SEO or an agency, then you can just use that now new template on your other competitor sites and everything else or not competitor, but your client’s site.

But yeah, I mean, like I said, experiment with it. There is all kinds of stuff that you can do with it. And then obviously you can look at my schema on my site and then it’ll kind of give you the different variables because local businesses is my sitewide schema right now. Getting ready to change, but right now it’s going to be local business.

Jesse Dolan: Great. I like what you said too about testing it in those incremental chunks because I learned that firsthand too. Like you said, you invest a lot of time figuring this out. You go paste it in there and it’s just like, “Oh my God, where did I go wrong? What comma, what bracket? What field? What are you talking about? This is missing.” Yeah, man, that’s gospel advice right there. Just take it chunk by chunk tested along the way. Kind of like carpentry. Measure twice, cut once. You’re going to save yourself a lot of time.

Terry Samuels: Or even if you have multiple monitors, like if I’m at my office, I’ll have two textiles open. One is the one that’s approved and good and the other one’s the working file.

Jesse Dolan: Nice.

Terry Samuels: So even when I end at the end of the day and I go to get on it the next day because one of the schema of projects I’m working on right now, I’m in my sixth day, then I’ll open the working file. I’ll obviously open the saved file, but I’ll be in the working file because that’s… I kind of use dot, dot, dots to kind of see where I left off. I do little things to know where I… It’s an old coder thing. You want to know where you ended and compare to where you usually want to start again instead of going through there and going, “Where did I stop?”

Jesse Dolan: Oh yeah, because it’s not like working on a web page where you’ve got sections and breaks and pictures. That’s just a bunch of text on the screen.

Terry Samuels: Yeah. So I’ll either put a dot, dot, dot or I’ll do a couple spaces to make sure I have a gap so I kind of know the next day. And even weekends are the worst. I learned this the hard way. Leaving on a Friday and not working the weekend and coming in on Monday and trying to figure out where you left off. It’s just, it can be really screwing with you.

Jesse Dolan: Right. No, that’s why I’m excited to have you talking about these topics again. Schema is such a, like a different language for the whole SEO sphere. This is a great Intel. I think everybody out there listening is probably already on the first question, picked up a couple of little nuggets that’s going to make their job a lot easier.

Terry Samuels: Oh, for sure.

Jesse Dolan: So, okay. I think that was great for the first one. Let’s jump into the second one. “When I look at schema on other sites, I see URLs input with hashtags on the domain, like hashtag org.” So it’d be like, for everybody, like Intrix.com/#org is what I would mean there. So putting hashtags on the domain, like hashtag org and a hashtag contact, do these URLs have to actually work or do you just put the hashtags in the schema and leave it? What’s the purpose of that when people see that, Terry?

Terry Samuels: Well, the hashtag is calling out what’s your… It’s usually the Ad-ID. I mean, and some other stuff. So the Ad-ID is special. So if you’re doing an organization schema and you’re using the website address, the regular website address slash hashtag org. Yes, it has to be a live real URL. Again, Google smart. I looked at one the other day and it was so keyword stuff then and that’s just wrong. I mean, I do this stuff because I take a lot of pride. I tell people I build a second website with schema and so I don’t do anything malicious that I wouldn’t do on the regular website.

So yeah, the links have to work and then because you can do this hashtag image, so on your image link. Yeah, that has to be a real image and you can’t just put bob.com and have it be go out to nowhere and you can’t use it as trying to trick things.

So there’s a different when it has a hashtag and then the ending of it, you don’t really want to use those typically so often as a silo-type link. So, but you do want to use it as a page. So if you’re doing a service link or a service schema for web design and your web design page should be slash hashtag service, then but you can also do other ones in there that will be links to other web design pages that aren’t going to have the hashtag.

So the only thing that really needs to hashtag is the main one that goes back to the website, but all the other sub URLs or silo URLs everything, you don’t need a hashtag on every single thing. So to be honest with you, I’ve got sites out there with no hashtags at all, so it kind of just goes to show. So I do it because I can definitely see the pattern of which ones I want hashtags and then which ones don’t need anything at all. And that’s typically, like I said, an image URL that makes sense to put a hashtag on there. Hashtag image. So, and it just gives a search engine more idea what that URL is.

Jesse Dolan: It’s just a little more specific call-out on that.

Terry Samuels: Exactly.It’s just extra call out. It’s not like it works in Twitter. It’s not for that. It’s just calling out a URL for a specific item or a specific page. So, and again, to do it or not to do it, you can do it or not do it, but I wouldn’t do it and try to fake anything out. Put a dead URL or a URL to time.doc on trying to think that that’s going to fool somebody on your search engines.

Jesse Dolan: Right on. And I think if people are listening, you go like, “What the hell are these guys even talking about?” Refer back to question one, as far as maybe checking out some competitors or checking out somebody else’s schema, you should be able to pull in there and you’ll see these hashtags we’re talking and they’ll go, “Oh, all right, I get what they’re saying now.”

If this is confusing. I don’t want to go super deep maybe into it even further. But if you’re sitting there going, “What are they even talking about?” Check out some schema, especially if it’s a local business schema or something else. You’ll see some of this in there and maybe listen to this back again the last couple of minutes and that’ll click for you.

And hey, guess what? If it doesn’t click submit a question. We’ll get the Terry answer in that deeper on the next one then.

Terry Samuels: Sure.

Jesse Dolan: So, all right, next question here. It says, “Getting an error,” and this is quote here, the quote meaning this is the actual error here that I’m going to say. “A value for the image field is required.” And so it’s, “Getting an error, ‘a value for the image field is required’ when I use the test tool. What value do they want here for that image?”

Terry Samuels: I mean, it really should tell you. If you can even private message me and send me the URL or whatever, but it should tell you what value is missing. Like I said, some values are mandatory, some values are not mandatory. And image, there’s only three or four values that are mandatory. So it’s probably something pretty simple. It can be as simple as a URL, it could be as simple as a description, but yeah, the tool should tell you, it’s not going to let you…

The only time it lets you guess is when you’re missing a comma or parenthesis or a bracket, because it doesn’t tell you where, but if you’re missing a field, then it should tell you what fields you’re missing. And then you also have to look at it as a warning or is it an error? If it’s a warning, like for instance, if you do product schema for E-com, if you don’t have a review for that brand new product, the schema tool is going to give you a warning and that warning is that they’re recommending a review.

Well, you don’t have one yet because you can’t put a review on a schema unless it’s on the page. So, again, is it a warning or is it an error? If it’s an error, you definitely have to fix it. If it’s a warning, it’s more of a suggestion. You should fix it if you can, obviously, but if you can’t it’s not hurting you, but yeah, anything that’s an error, but a value missing, they should tell you what that value is. Value missing URL, or value missing price range.

I see price range values errors all the time, because some schemas you choose, even like medical doctor. They want to see a price range in there. Well, somebody will say, “Well, I don’t really know the price range.” And I’m like, “Well then put two dollar signs.” You can put dollar signs up there, one through five. One, if they’re cheap, five if they’re expensive. They’re not actually looking like $200 to $10,000. So that’s not what a price range is.

Jesse Dolan: Cheap or expensive generally speaking, right?

Terry Samuels: Exactly. Exactly. So if it’s definitely an image line, like I said, there’s not very many mandatory things and it’s probably going to be pretty simple. If you can’t figure it out, send it to me. I’ll show you.

Jesse Dolan: I usually clarify too, when we say this with the error and like Terry is saying the more specific thing that’ll tell you where the error is, this is all in the structured data testing tool, which is, as we talked earlier as well, Terry, as you’re saying, test this stuff as you go. That’s also in the structured data testing tool. We’ll link to it in the show notes, but if you want to check it out, just Google structured data testing tool. It’s a Google tool. It should pop up at the top of the results. That’s what you’re running all this through to check your schema to make sure it works. And that’s what’s spitting out the error on this particular question and giving you the guidance that Terry’s talking about.

Terry Samuels: And you might see a thing in there that they’re getting rid of it. As far as we’ve been told, they’re not. They just haven’t removed that little box yet.

Jesse Dolan: Right.

Terry Samuels: They got a lot of kickback on from basically the world. Because this is really the only accurate tool we have to checks this stuff. Semrush tries to do it, some other tools out there try to do it, but they’re not going to do it through Google standard. So this is Google and that’s one of the things they just got a bunch of backlash about taking this away from us because we need to know. I mean, otherwise you load it up and then we have just wait for search console to tell us we have an error.

Jesse Dolan: That would be such a long way around. I can’t even imagine.

Terry Samuels: Yep. Oh, it would be crazy. Especially as you’re building something and I’ve tried some schema data testing tools that weren’t Google and they’re horrendous. They really don’t know what they’re… They don’t know how to compare the schema.org compared to Google. As far as I’m concerned, there’s probably pretty expensive to have those two connect together.

Jesse Dolan: Yeah. Makes sense.

Terry Samuels: But Google built schema.org with Yahoo and Bing. So, they built it from scratch to be able to have this type of system compared to a third-party that just trying to come in and say, “Oh, you’re missing this, you’re missing this.” And you’re like, “Really?”

Jesse Dolan: Well, I think it’s been an awesome tool. Sometimes we knock on Google. They have a lot of free tools, whether it’s be Google Search Console, Google Analytics and there’s quirks, but the schema testing tool is just like, it’s just a great tool. It just does its thing. It’s accurate.

Terry Samuels: Yeah. It does its thing and it’s accurate. We used to, six, eight months ago, we Google the testing tool and search console. You would still get some errors through search console and it would pass the testing tool, but it seems to me that’s kind of fixed now. So I don’t know if it was in the search console side or this side, but the point is, I use this tool constantly.

So, and it’s getting to the point that we’ve now got to the idea of, because we do so many testing and I’m doing so much… I’m trying to just add fields to see what I can do. That’s how we got the keyword field to go into the web page field or the webpage schema. So that was big. That was a huge task because I knew we could put keywords into some things, but I just needed to find out. I’d rather have it on an web page level than a service level.

And so, that’s kind of how we use this tool to find out about that. And it’s just matter of seeing if it liked it or not. If it didn’t like it, you delete it and try something else.

Jesse Dolan: Yeah. Can I parse it out and understand what I input or not, right? At the end of the day.

Terry Samuels: Yes. And a lot of people don’t know too, that you can make changes in here. If you get an error you can make a change in here and hit that gray arrow at the bottom that says validate and it’ll validate it to see if you fixed it. The challenge of it is, is keep track what you’re fixing in here because it’s not on your text file. So it does save time because you’re missing one comma or something, but if you change the comma in here, you have to make sure you change the comma on your file that you’re working in.

Jesse Dolan: Great point. Yeah. That stuff can definitely get confusing if you’re messing in both. And oh, you’re saying if you’ve got a production ready, text file, a in-progress text file and now you’re making changes in the testing tool itself just remember where you’re at.

Terry Samuels: Exactly. Just keep track of yourself.

Jesse Dolan: Keep track of yourself.

Terry Samuels: We do it every day.

Jesse Dolan: Now you sound like my wife, I don’t know. All right. Fourth and final question here for you, Terry. “My site is using,” again, quotes. Air quotes here for those on video. “My site is using inline schema, inputting the schema into the div with…” This is something that I should probably screen share. This is horrible to read on audio as I’m going through this live here, but, “inputting the schema into the div with,” again in quotes ‘item prop equals coding.'”
It goes on to say, “In Terry’s previous episode, he talked about the JSON and putting schema into the head. I have done this. Do I remove the inline schema or keep it in there if I have the new schema in the head now?” Right. So Terry, I know you know what I meant reading all that. Again, everybody else I’ll paste it in there. Maybe Terry as you answer this, can you explain a little bit on the difference between the item prop type schema, the inline and the JSON? Sorry to put you on the spot.

Terry Samuels: No, it’s really not. I mean, there’s different types of schemes. There’s microdata, there’s inline, there’s all different kinds of things. JSON is the one that’s the most reliable and becoming the standard, but schema inside of a div, it was kind of like the old school way because it was, micro-data was even the oldest way and it’s actually going away. So the old ways of doing schema, and this is where it was really find out that it really do much good.

But the biggest thing is that, yeah, it’s old school. It doesn’t do anything as far as I’m concerned because you can’t do a normal JSON schema can do. But the short answer is yes, delete all schema. So, and we even do this with everything. So when we take over a site just for schema-only projects we’ll go in and we’ll make sure that we get rid of all the schema that’s currently there, whether it’s through a plugin or whether, whatever it is.

And the bad part of it is, is when you have some div-type stuff, this stuff is typically in the code of the website or the code or the theme. So that even gets harder to find. So I had one that, it was probably hard-coded in 15 different places in the code and it literally took hours to clear up the original schema just to get rid of it because it was the old div code or the old… They would even hard-code JSON code in there, which I still don’t understand.

Jesse Dolan: Are you talking about one of our projects by the way? Just subtly giving me a shot here? Okay.

Terry Samuels: No, not at all. So, but the idea is that the schema that we build and we use the header footer code manager plugin because it gives us full access to dictate where exactly we want that schema because we stack schema on the inside pages. And when you start stacking scheme and you don’t have control of what you’re doing because of your div codes or item proper, whatever, it’s just good to get rid of all of it.

And again, use the data checking tool. So if you have items in there now and you wipe it out, check it again. You want a blank slate because the problem with not having a blank slate is when you load up custom schema or advanced schema, and you already have some schema that’s in the theme or some schema that’s in Yoast or whatever, you’re going to get duplicates. And duplicate might not cause an error, but they’re not going to give you the credibility that you need as you build this thing out with schema.

So you don’t want to have two web page schemas on the same page. It probably won’t come up as a warning or an error, but it’s just smart practice. Just keep your schema clean. And then with Shopify, Shopify automatically puts stuff in. So, and I just found out about this because I was hired to do a Shopify site. And so you put in a product, Shopify automatically builds the product schema. Well, you’ve got to go into the code of Shopify and overwrite that, and it’s a major pain in the butt, just because it’s automated into the theme, we don’t have access in Shopify to the main build out theme, obviously.

So you just have to remember as you’re working in some of these platforms like Shopify or I heard Joomla has the same type of problem, but I’m not real sure. I’m not a big person with Joomla. I don’t mess with it, but in the Shopify part, you just have to remember that you have to manually either copy and paste and override the current schema or delete it and then put yours in.

So, otherwise, you get to product schemas and those will cause a duplicate error from Google and then you’ll be going, “What do you mean? I just put it into the one page?” Well, you didn’t see what the platform did automatically. So everybody’s trying to get on the schema bandwagon. And so the challenge of it is, is it’s the same schema you would get from any plugin.

Where our schema is different is we do the investigation of the stuff, of the business owner, of the brand of all the stuff that a plugin is not going to do. The plugin is just looking at the webpage or website itself. It’s not looking at all the different accolades Salterra or Intrycks has. It doesn’t go out and find the awards that you want. It doesn’t go out and find the… You have a Dun & Bradstreet location. You have a BBB-type link.

Those are stuff that these tools don’t find. And that’s the stuff that builds the trust within the schema for Google, that’s the gold. And so yeah, so the first thing we do is just stop whatever schema is on there currently and then we’ll load up ours. Always doing the site-wide first, and then the site-wide can control everything as we’re building the rest out.

Jesse Dolan: You make some great points there too. I mean, it’s just like anything else. I mean, you get what you pay for slash if you’re looking for an easy push button solution, like if it’s just like a website theme. If you’re just going to roll with some pre-made WordPress theme and not customize it, guess what? Somebody else has that too and you ain’t standing out. I mean, is it better than nothing? Okay, maybe, but if you’re looking to make an impact, like it’s an investment to do something for you, there’s got to be something that makes it unique to your business, just like everything else with your business.

You’re not using that same logo somebody else did, or the same X-Y-Z. Insert thing there. So I think that’s really good insight for people because I think schema can be super intimidating and complex and if you’re going to do it and you just have to either hire a professional where you need it, or a consultant or understand like, well, that’s just the way it’s going to be. You can’t just make it easy and cookie-cutter. It’s just the nature of it. If you want results, I should say. If you want results.

Terry Samuels: And that’s the whole thing. You have to make a decision. Is schema going to be part of your everyday package that you do for your clients? And if it is then do the schema that’s going to help. Don’t do the schema that’s just going to be a schema because I mean, it’s amazing some of the stuff that we show our business owners of the schema.

Like I said, we put stuff in the schema they probably will never put on the public side of their website. It’s either too much information or it’s whatever, but we put it in schema just because we know that the more stuff you mention about the owners, the brand, the URL and all the links from the URL into you, then that just builds trust and authority. That’s the bottom line.

And we’ve seen that over and over again as we do these massive projects and I think it’s the easiest, easiest in relative terms, as far as manipulating anything right now. As far as On Page, I’m an On Page guy. So it’s part of On Page. And like I said, we’ve got a lot of sites out there just On Page and schema. I’ve got a site out there with just schema ranking. Nothing even else on this site.

So we know that the scheme of works. Now, it just depends on how much you want to get into it and make it work. So, I don’t use any plugin schema at all. None. And the big reason is, is stuff like Rank Math puts in header schema and footer schema and it’s really, clean it up.

Schemas not doing any good. It’s not like you’re doing schema so, some guy told me, Well, so Google better understands the website.” Well, Google knows it has a header. Google knows that it has a footer. I mean, that’s not the stuff that ranks a website. The stuff that ranks a website, it’s the content within the parentheses. It’s not just saying, “Hey, we have a header and here’s our logo.” Well, great. That’s no surprise.

It’s not like any other site in you competition doesn’t have that. They just don’t put it in schema that way. Yoast does that. So, but the biggest thing is if you make the decision to go down the advanced schema road, then go down it. Build your templates, build your libraries, make it part of your SOPs, and when you get on a new client, pull out whatever library is close and just copy and paste the changes. Start doing your research and next thing you know, I’ve got 600 and plus template files for schema.

So whatever I want to go after, or whatever comes at me, I know I’ve got to start. Does it mean that’s the end all, be all? No, because the most up-to-date schemas on my website. And so, but my website isn’t for a plumber. So I would still have to pull the plumber schema down, the template and add in all the new stuff that we know works on my website. So my websites the testing thing. So just because I figured if I’m going to test a website, I might as well test the website that already has traffic, already has ranking, because I can see results quicker.

Jesse Dolan: Test what works.

Terry Samuels: Yeah. results good or bad.

Jesse Dolan: Yep. Good testing method. I think, as you’re saying too, I’m thinking in my head, you mentioned other agencies. I know there’s kind of a mix. If it’s 50/50 or otherwise of you folks listening out there that are learning SEO, learning from Terry here to apply it at your agency, but then there’s also a good mix of you listening that we know that are business owners, and I think this is something that maybe more agency people, or SEO’s are comfortable with as a discussion.

But if you’re sitting there as a business owner or a marketing manager like, “How do I even begin on this?” I think I’d circle back and tell you, “Go to that testing tool, pop your website in there.” If you’re not seeing, if you’re only seeing like site-wide schema or not any business location. Or I’m sorry, local business schema, if you need some help interpreting that, reach out. We can let you know.

If you don’t know this stuff, it’s going to be a foreign topic. But just start with testing, is there schema on your website before you worry about some of the complexities here? If there ain’t, you need it on your website. You should definitely be reaching out and getting that done. So Terry, I think that’s awesome. Did you have any other closing thoughts? Otherwise that’s the four questions we wanted to cover. Thanks a ton.

Terry Samuels: Nope. I’m good. Looking forward to our next session. Like I said, I’m an open book. So ask away. Now, if I can recommend something just let me know. I’ve had some people contact me about some odd-ball type websites and, “What scheme have you recommend?” You know what I mean? So, no problem. Just reach out and we can see how we can help you. And then I love these things I’m looking forward for the next batch of questions.
And, it’s like I said, this is a passion of mine and we test it all the time. And so, not that I wanted to become a guru at it. It’s just because I’ve been doing this so long, it’s kind of a, even though I’ve been doing schema, advanced schema for over a year, it’s still new to me because you can still go into a different competition, a different competitive market, a different town, different city. They’re all different. So…

Jesse Dolan: And it’s evolving too.

Terry Samuels: Oh, yeah. And we’re finding little tips and tricks that work in some places geo relevant that don’t work in other places. So, it’s also not a cookie-cutter system. That’s why I said that there’s still the same amount of investigation goes into the project. Building the actual schema out is the easy part if you have a template.

It’s the actual research you need to do, or you should do to go out and make this schema blow people’s minds as far as what the search engines are going to be able to see about you or about your brand or about your partner or whatever. So just be serious about it. Don’t just half-ass it.

Jesse Dolan: Well, I hope everybody listening. I’ve got a few more questions already saved up for our next session. But again, like I said on the front side, if this spurs anybody to have more questions, or if you’re like, “Dang, Terry was almost there. I want him to dive deeper.” Whatever’s in your craw on the schema topic, go to localSEOtactics.com. Bottom left, click the button for schema and drop a question in there.

We’re going to dive deeper into this stuff. We’re trying to start a little more basic in some of these questions and get deeper and deeper as we go. All right. So with that being said, I’m going to read our five-star review here for this episode, Terry. We got a great review here. This was from, through our GMB actually, through Google reviews from John Diaz.

John says, “These guys are really great and know what they’re talking about. The podcasts are a huge help to all beginners looking to get into SEO.” Appreciate that, John that’s what we’re trying to do is just share knowledge, try to demystify some of this, help you guys out. Again, like we said earlier with Terry, whether you’re a local, not local, but if you’re an SEO agency look to do this for your local clients, or if you’re a business owner or a marketing manager or whatever, doing this for your own brand, your own website, hopefully you’re getting some good nuggets out of here.

Learning things like this with schema that are a little bit more advanced that you can apply, but hopefully they’re just actionable advice that you can take out of this and like a great two-way dialogue, right? If you didn’t get actionable advice, tell us what advice you need and we’ll get it to you on the next one. So appreciate you hanging out, Terry. Looking forward to the next one and we’ll keep on rocking. So, all right.

Terry Samuels: Thank you. Thanks, everyone.

Jesse Dolan: Take care. See you guys later.

****

Questions for Terry;
  1. If I want to do Local Business schema on my site/page, should I copy a competitors and reverse engineer it?  Or should I use an online schema generator tool to create this?  Or a plugin?  Where do I start?
  2. When I look at schema on other sites I see URLs input with hashtags on the domain like #org and #contact.  Do these URLS have to actually work, or do you just put the hashtags in the schema and leave it?
  3. Getting an error “A value for the image field is required” when I use the test tool.  What value do they want here?
  4. My site is using “inline Schema”, inputting the schema into <div> with “itemprop=” coding.  In Terry’s previous interview he talked about JSON and putting schema in the <head>.  I have done this.  Do I remove the inline Schema or keep it in there if I have the new Schema in the <head> now?

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