County's ride-sharing business licensing powers questioned

Local governments can't impose special taxes, fees or requirements on transportation network companies that aren't applicable to other businesses, the state's Legislative Counsel Bureau says.

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Long lines welcome new Blick Art Materials store

The line outside the new Blick Art Materials store at 6300 W. Charleston Blvd., Suite 130, stretched around the building and through the parking lot.

Source Business http://ift.tt/1UMXMOb

Anatomy of a Failed Liberal State

When I grew up in the north suburbs of Chicago in the 1960s and the1970s, the state of Illinois was still a‎ financial and industrial powerhouse. Today, the state had to embarrassingly announce that it doesn't even funds to pay lottery winners.

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Marketing Day: E-Commerce Report, Jet.com’s Video Campaign & Periscope Offers Landscape Video

Here's our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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How to Stay Calm in an Uncertain Market

Don’t let your emotions cause you to make investment mistakes.

Source U.S. News - Money http://ift.tt/1gfYjdA

5 Big Reasons Budgets Fail

Why are budgets so tough to follow? They're hard work and time consuming, for starters.


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LA retailer closes 7 shops at SLS Las Vegas

Los Angeles-based retailer Fred Segal has abandoned its exclusive operations at the SLS Las Vegas, removing the seven stores the company had run since the Strip resort opened last year.

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Ready to Buy a House? These Are the 10 Best ZIP Codes for First-Time Home Buyers

Buying your first home is one of the most exhilarating and terrifying processes you’ll go through as an adult.

An overwhelming load of factors boils down to one big question: Where should you buy a home?

To help you tackle this huge decision, Realtor.com has done some of the heavy lifting. Their 2015 list of the hottest ZIP codes in America takes into account everything millennials want in a locale and ranks the top 10 spots.

What Makes a Neighborhood Great?

This is the big question — how do you compare one area to another? Here’s what Realtor.com considered, and how their top ZIP codes stand out.

Strong Local Economy and Jobs

For starters, job prospects are fantastic, especially for millennials aged 25-34. Unemployment is dropping faster in these areas than anywhere else in the country, and the median income for millennials in these ZIP codes is 50% higher than the national average of $54,000.

Affordability

The price of homes in these areas runs the spectrum. They’re weighed against costs in  surrounding areas and potential income, so you know you won’t have to hand over an arm and a leg to reap the benefits of the alluring location.

Transportation and Recreation

The list also considers access to public transportation and commute times. You shouldn’t have to fight crazy traffic between your dream job and your perfect home!

The analysts also thought about non-economic factors like proximity to shopping and restaurants.

Quality of Education

Finding the best job for you doesn’t always coincide with finding the best school district for your kids. Realtor.com addresses that concern, too — these hot ZIP codes have both.

What Are the Hottest ZIP Codes in America?

Topping the list is 02176 in Melrose, Massachusetts.

This millennial magnet puts you close to both Boston and Cambridge but is much more affordable. You get access to a hip downtown and good public transportation — and to top it off, millennials here earn a median household income of $88,000, a whopping 67% higher than elsewhere in the country.

The Columbus, Ohio, suburb of Worthington (43085) and the Littleton, Colorado, suburb of Centennial (80122) ranked second and third, respectively. Check out these attractive towns for their access to major cities without the high housing costs.

Texas topped the states, with three ZIP codes making the list. Dallas suburb Plano (75023) was ranked fourth, and the top 10 also included neighborhoods in San Antonio and Austin (a city that also happens to be one of the best homes for freelancers!)

Want to know more? See the full list at Realtor.com.

Your Turn: Did your ZIP code make the list? If you’re considering buying your first home, would you look in one of these neighborhoods?

Dana Sitar is a Staff Writer at The Penny Hoarder. She also writes about writing, work, life and love for blogs and books and sometimes things people care about, like Huffington Post and that one time she had an article published in The Onion. Follow along on Twitter @danasitar.

The post Ready to Buy a House? These Are the 10 Best ZIP Codes for First-Time Home Buyers appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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10 Reasons Your Business Should Have a Website

A website can be crucial to a business' success. Learn 10 reasons your business should have a website at HowStuffWorks.

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10 Reasons Your Business Should Have a Website

A website can be crucial to a business' success. Learn 10 reasons your business should have a website at HowStuffWorks.

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E-Commerce Conversion Rates Improve In Q2 After Several Declining Quarters [Report]

Performance improvements occurred across all devices.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Trump now has full ownership of Miss Universe

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump said on Friday he had bought NBC's share of the Miss Universe Organization and that all lawsuits against the media company had been settled.

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The Best $125 I’ve Ever Spent?

Photo: Shaun T via Facebook

In June of this year, my husband and I decided it was time to make a change. We had just returned from an especially indulgent getaway, and were feeling a lot less healthy than we normally do.

Of course, it was totally our fault. While away, we ate and drank like the world might end. I’m talking mac-n-cheese entrées with a side of pancakes and a Fireball chaser. And let’s not forget the beer that washed it all down, plus the fancy meal we ate at P.F. Chang’s on the way.

Unfortunately, all of that “indulgence” caught up with us by the time we pulled into the driveway. I felt bloated and unhealthy, and my husband swore he had gained 10 pounds in just five days. A quick step onto the scale confirmed our fears. After years of maintaining our figures somewhat, we were letting them slip away.

My $125 Splurge Purchase

But, before I could panic, something happened. While I don’t make a habit of falling for crazy proclamations and “before and after” imagery, a commercial for a specific video workout system caught my eye the next day.

Out of nowhere, Shaun T’s “Focus T25” exercise program seemed like the answer to my problems. It was only 25 minutes long, they said. And they guaranteed results. Plus, the people in the before and after pictures really did look amazing.

The problem? T25 was $125, which is, quite frankly, more money than I spend on almost anything. I stressed over the purchase for a few hours before moving to the Focus T25 website for more “before and after” picture miracles.

In the meantime, I also found Focus 25 available on Amazon.com, which meant I could use a few gift cards from Christmas to take the sting out of its price tag. And that’s exactly what I did. I ordered the thing and waited for it to arrive, anxious to get started.

Making Exercise a Priority

While I exercise fairly regularly, this year’s early spring and start of summer were pretty busy. And that’s part of the reason we needed this so bad. Since both of us had done a pretty decent job of staying in shape until now — at the age of 35 — it would be a shame to let our fitness slide further.

But my biggest problem is just finding the time. With two small kids, my own business, rental properties, a house to take care of, laundry to do, meals to cook, plus whatever else, I am always running around like a madwoman. How could I make this work?

Here’s what I have always known but sometimes hate to admit: When you want something, you make time for it. I make time for my kids because they are a priority, right? And I make time for my husband for the same reason. And if I don’t have time to exercise regularly, how did I watch entire seasons of Master Chef, Real Housewives of Orange County, and Arrested Development on Netflix this summer? Huh?

Hell, one of my former relatives by marriage has three times as many children as me and still runs marathons. Marathons! And she trains for them, too. If she can put that kind of time into taking care of her body, I could, too.

Plus, the videos are only 25 minutes. How hard could it be? I could surely get up 30 minutes early most days, or work out after the kids are in bed. Or I could squeeze it in at lunch time instead of playing with my cat. I could do this!

Unfortunately, it nearly ended as quickly as it began. After the first video, my husband hovered over the bathroom trashcan for 20 minutes trying not to puke. And me? I just felt like I was going to die.

But we didn’t really see that as a failure. Actually, we let our embarrassment serve as motivation. Funny how that works. So, Monday through Saturday, for an entire 10 weeks, we did a T25 video every day.

Enduring 10 Weeks of Focus T25

I’m not even going to pretend it was easy, and I didn’t do everything perfectly, either. For example, there were some moves that my body just didn’t want to do. Sorry, but Pike-Ups and Burpees are torture. Sometimes I did them anyway, but sometimes I ignored them and did a different move.

Other times I would turn on the video for the timing but freestyle it. I remember one time, I spent the entire 25 minutes jogging in place with my arms flapping like a bird. And another, I turned the video on and danced for 25 minutes.

And sometimes, I pretended I was a short, white version of Shaun T. and just made up my own moves altogether. “You can do this,” I would scream at my husband. “It’s only 25 minutes!”

He wasn’t always amused.

After a few weeks, I also got mega-sick of Shaun T.’s voice. It got to the point where I could anticipate his next steps and words, and that got old. “Don’t run from the pain,” he would say, “feel the pain.” Over. And over. And over. And over.

Eventually, I started listening to my iPod to tune him out. With that small move, I replaced his tired script with five or six fast-moving songs instead. It was a huge relief to listen to Nirvana, Led Zeppelin, Lady Gaga, Neil Diamond, and Radiohead while also getting my workout in.

And thanks to those artists, I was able to absolutely kill it day after day.

With Exercise, Consistency Matters

Even though I didn’t do everything by the book, I accomplished a great deal during my 10-week Focus T25 series. It didn’t seem to matter that I didn’t do every move right, or that I would sometimes mess them up. What mattered is that I was doing something, and that I did it consistently enough for it to help.

And I already knew that deep down, which is why I didn’t sweat the fact that my T-Rex arms make certain Focus T-25 moves hard. It didn’t matter if I skipped a move or six and danced like Lady Gaga instead. What mattered was that I kept my body moving for that whole 25 minutes, whether I truly wanted to or not.

Focus T25: My Results

Although I’ll spare you my “before and after” pictures (yes, my husband forced me to take pictures so we could get a free T-shirt), I’m happy to report that Focus T25 delivered what it promised. Over the course of 10 weeks, my husband lost 25 pounds and I lost 10. That means my husband is now at his lowest weight since college, and I am only 5 pounds from having my pre-baby body back. That’s pretty amazing, when you consider the fact that I have struggled to lose these last few pounds since my youngest was born four years ago.

But what really mattered to me was inches. Over the course of 10 weeks, I lost 2 inches around my waist, 1½ inches around my chest, and 1½ inches around each leg. I worked so hard to make this happen, and I am now finding that I fit into clothes I haven’t fit into for a few years.

Most importantly, I feel stronger than I have in a long time. After 10 short weeks, a 25-minute workout is nothing now. Sometimes I even add in some abs or a 20-minute run afterward, just for fun.

Where exercise was once optional, it is now a priority.

I do plan to change things up and try new videos, but my dedication is now unstoppable. My husband and I even bought some more used workout gear for our garage so we could mix in some Crossfit moves, too.

And at the end of the day, my $125 “splurge” was some of the best money I have ever spent.

The Bottom Line

You don’t have to spend $125 to get in shape. Despite the hype that your favorite informercials and local gyms put out, there are plenty of ways to work out at home for free or cheap.

My friend Chad, for example, pays less than $5 per month for a streaming Beach Body subscription he can access through his Roku box. Another friend of mine lost 100 pounds by signing up for Nutrisystem and doing free Jillian Michaels videos he found on YouTube.

The key is, doing something — anything – consistently and long enough to make a difference. And that’s exactly why this particular program worked for me — and why I’m now a believer. In just 10 weeks, I went from frumpy and mad at myself to feeling like I’m on top of the world. And that shows through every aspect of my life, even my work.

To top it all off, I learned a lot about myself during a short amount of time. I learned that I really can do anything for 25 minutes a day — even if I don’t want to, and even if I’m busy and feel overwhelmed. I learned that I am stronger than I think most days. I’m not Ronda Rousey, but one day I could be.

But the most important thing I learned is that I had to want it; I had to believe in the goal, and in myself.

And for the first time in a really long time, I do.

Do you exercise regularly? Have you ever tried any exercise videos online or a video series like Focus T25? 

The post The Best $125 I’ve Ever Spent? appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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Jet Tries Quirky Branding Effort That Turns Customers’ Shopping Carts Into Videos

The fledgling e-commerce site steps out with an attention-getting one-day real-time video-making effort, with the hope of intriguing customers and prospects with its humor and personality.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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The Holes In Your Walls Cost You an Extra $200 a Year. Here’s How to Fix Them

“Are we heating the whole neighborhood?!” is something you probably heard as a kid — or have asked your own kids.

Yes, you are, even if your door is closed. Unless your home is hermetically sealed, heated (or cooled) air inside your home will escape.

But the crucial factors are how easily that air escapes, and its temperature.

The First Step

Before you do anything on your own, call your utility company. These companies often offer energy-saving programs to reduce air leaks from your home. Some even include “infiltration” audits specifically to find air leakage.

You might be able to get a free home audit, and even receive a few free products to help keep more of your heated or cooled air inside your house.

If your company doesn’t offer one of these programs, or they come up short on sealing everything, here’s how to DIY.

DIY Home Sealing to Save Money on Heating and Cooling

Energy Star provides a good comprehensive list of areas where you could be leaking conditioned (either hot or cold) air, as well as a great interactive guide and pamphlet on sealing them.

Depending on your love of DIY and general handy skills, choose from three levels of home-sealing work. If you’re ready to go all-out and slash your utility bills, see the last section for advanced home-sealing techniques.

Easy Fixes

If you can see light through the edges of your exterior doors, you’re losing air — and money.

To block that airflow, try a draft guard. It’s basically two pool noodles in a pillow case. Adding a bit of rice or dried corn makes the guard a bit heavier and a better sealer. If you have windows that don’t close perfectly, try a smaller version there.

To reduce the amount of heat you lose through your windows, use window wraps. Will a thin sheet of plastic actually reduce your bill? Yes! When properly installed over the trim, the plastic creates an air gap between it and the window, which helps reduce drafts and heat transfer through the window.

I use 3 mm clear plastic trash bags and masking tape. Yes, my wife let me put trash bags on the windows. All in the name of savings!

It’s important to use clear plastic. In the winter, sunlight coming through the windows helps heat both the air gap and the interior of your home. In the summer, dark colors can absorb heat and transfer it into your home, but clear plastic helps keep the heat outside so your home stays cooler.

Harder Repairs

Look around your attic and basement for blackened insulation, which is a sign of air traveling through it.

(I assume you have insulation — if you don’t, call someone immediately! No door and gap sealing will help you, since you’re losing heat right through the walls.)

Make sure your attic insulation isn’t compressed. The air gaps within the insulation are what keep the hot air where it belongs. Blown-in insulation should be light and fluffy, and batt insulation should lay flat without being cramped or pressed.

Check the door to the attic. Seal the edge with cushion weatherstrips and, ideally, two layers of batt insulation.

Next, find the intentional openings in your home for water pipes, electric, gas, cable and phone service or vents. Ironically, the gas service in my home had the largest completely unimpeded hole in my wall.

Use foam or caulk (or both) to seal these holes both inside and outside. To find these holes, I use the “follow the screams” method. Spiders like to build webs in these openings because of the air drafts. Where you find spiders, you’ll usually find openings.

Advanced Home-Sealing Strategies

Seal everything: doors, windows, crawlspaces and attics.

Pull off the trim from every exterior door and window to see if it’s foam sealed. Builders frequently shim windows and door frames into place, leaving gaps for air to escape. Fill these gaps with foam, then caulk on both sides of the trim.

Buy cheap outlet foam sealers and put them inside all outlets and switches on exterior walls. These are the weakest points of an insulated wall.

If you feel a draft, find it and stuff it closed. Fireplace, range hood, microwave and bathroom vents are all intentional openings for air to escape. If you can, cover these when you’re not using them.

Check your ducts. Many homes have ductwork over and under their interior structures in crawlspaces and attics.

20% or more of the conditioned air in your home never reaches its intended destination or is unconditioned upon delivery. To DIY, use metal tape to seal the joints of the ductwork you can see. Wrap all joints and especially the corners, even if you don’t think they’re leaking air yet.

Don’t use standard tape, duct tape or fiber/paper/plastic tape. These can melt and will wear out quickly in extreme temperatures.

How Much Can You Save?

Energy Star estimates you spend 15% of your heating and cooling costs on air that leaks right out of your house.

At the Energy Information Administration average gas heating cost in the US of $679 a season, that’s $101.85 a year, or $20.37 a month for the five months most people use their heat. If you’re one of the half of Americans who heat with something other than gas, your savings will be even higher.

These repairs will also help you save on air conditioning costs in the summer. If you save 15% of the estimated EIA average cooling bill of $412, that’s about $61 over three months, or $20.33 a month.

After you seal your ducts, if you can keep even just 5% of the air at its conditioned level, you can save $55 on heating and cooling bills.

Combined, a weekend of hunting air leaks with a few dollars in sealing equipment can help you save approximately $200 a year on heating and cooling costs. The best part: These savings repeat, season after season, from the upfront work.

How Much Should You Spend on Home-Sealing Repairs?

These figures are based on averages, though; there’s no easy way to calculate exactly what you and your house will save, which makes it difficult to figure out how much to spend on home-sealing materials.

My rule of thumb is to take the difference between your highest three bills and your lowest three bills and multiply by the promised 15%.

For example, let’s say your lowest bills (most likely March/April and September/October) are each $100, and your highest are each $300. Here’s the math:

$300 x 3 = $900

$100 x 3 = $300

$900 – $300 = $600

$600 x 0.15 = $90

So I’ll likely save about $90 in a year. If I know I’ll live in my house for three to five years, I might be willing to spend double that, since my savings will last at least that long.

If your bills are fairly steady throughout the year, you’ll benefit less from temperature-controlling measures, but it’s likely you’ll still save a few bucks by taking the easiest steps.

Happy leak-hunting and home-sealing!

Your Turn: Have you worked to seal gaps in your home and make the most of your heated and cooled air? Did you notice a difference in your utility bills?

Disclosure: We have a serious Taco Bell addiction around here. The affiliate links in this post help us order off the dollar menu. Thanks for your support!

Cade Simmons works in energy efficiency oversight and has a Master’s degree in Economics specializing in public utility regulation from New Mexico State University.

The post The Holes In Your Walls Cost You an Extra $200 a Year. Here’s How to Fix Them appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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10 Pitfalls to Avoid in Your Online Business

Online businesses aren't exactly like their traditional counterparts. Learn some of the most common pitfalls at HowStuffWorks.

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10 Pitfalls to Avoid in Your Online Business

Online businesses aren't exactly like their traditional counterparts. Learn some of the most common pitfalls at HowStuffWorks.

Source Business & Money - HowStuffWorks http://ift.tt/1Q6WIDa

Report: Google & Twitter Are Working On Accelerated Mobile Pages For Publishers

The companies are developing an open source version of "instant articles" to solve the problem of slow loading mobile sites, Recode reports.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Economic Outlook Summit: Monroe's drop in labor force reflects overall population decline

Monroe County policymakers and entrepreneurs heard bad news and good news Friday during East Stroudsburg University's annual Economic Outlook Summit. Among the bad news is a 6.5 percent decline in employment since the 2008 recession, the worst in an eight-county region examined by ESU's Business Economic Research Group for its 2015 economic scorecard. [...]

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Standing On Shoulders Of Apple Pay, Google’s Android Pay Officially Launches

Google was first with Wallet. But it was blocked by frightened mobile carriers and, beyond that, failed to capture the imagination of users. Apple’s later-arriving Apple Pay got the user experience right and helped educate the market, laying the groundwork for Google’s payments...

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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How Your Retirement Nest Egg Is Being Nickel-and-Dimed By Fees

You may be surprised by how much money fees are sucking out of your retirement fund.

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Get Ready For A Shift To Consumer-Centric Marketing

What can you do to move your organization away from silos and toward an approach that centers on the customer journey? Columnist Nathan Safran shares tips and explains why the change is critical.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Parents: How to Get Your Hands on 30 Free Kids’ Books, From Captain Underpants to El Chavo

Calling all book lovers — Kellogg’s, Walmart and Scholastic want to give you up to 30 free books!

Whether you’ve got a youngster, early reader or tween at home, you’re sure to find a few good options. Take your pick of more than 80 titles from Scholastic, including classics like Clifford the Big Red Dog, Goosebumps and The Baby-Sitters Club.

Here’s how to get your hands on your books.

How to Get Free Books

First, you’ll need to go shopping.

Head to Walmart and look for specially marked packages of Kellogg’s products like Cheez-It crackers, Apple Jacks cereal and Pop-Tarts. (Use an app like Ibotta or Checkout51 to save some cash on your purchases!)

Look inside for the 16-digit code, and enter it here. You’ll need to create an account, but it’s quick. Or, you can choose to sign in with Facebook.

To enter your code, you must be a U.S. citizen aged 13 or older, so you’ll have to help your kids choose their free books.

Choose whether you prefer a physical book — which the company will ship to your address, free of charge — or an ebook.

If you want to read your ebook online, you can do so in Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari. If you’d prefer to download it, follow these steps in the FAQ.

Pass It On

If you buy these Kellogg’s products but don’t need any books for yourself, enter your code anyway and choose the “donate” option.

You’ll get to choose the book you’d like to donate, and the school that will receive it. There’s your good deed for the day!

Enter your codes until March 31, 2016.

And if you’re looking for more free or low-cost books, check out this post for more ideas.

Your Turn: Which free book will you pick?

Disclosure: We have a serious Taco Bell addiction around here. The affiliate links in this post help us order off the dollar menu. Thanks for your support!

Maryann Akinboyewa is a social media strategist and writer.

The post Parents: How to Get Your Hands on 30 Free Kids’ Books, From Captain Underpants to El Chavo appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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Demystifying SEO: How to Skyrocket Your Traffic Through Schema Markup

Good writers always write for their visitors, not for search engines.

Actually, that’s not quite true…

At the dawn of SEO, you did have to write for the search engines. The primitive search engines could only evaluate the relevance of your content to the query by the number of times the searched keyword was mentioned in the content.

By simply including the keyword as many times as possible, you’d rank well.

Obviously, search engines have evolved since then.

With Google’s updates in the past few years, it’s become clear that keyword stuffing no longer helps you rank (in fact, it hurts you).

Now, Google looks at several on-page factors to determine a page’s relevancy.

The new advice for content writers is: write for your visitors, and let Google worry about the rest.

It’s not bad advice. In fact, that’s what the writer should do. However, SEOs can, and often should, optimize that content further.

Even if you write all your content yourself, you need to play the parts of both the writer and the SEO.

How can you optimize your content further?

One main way, that is heavily underutilized, is through microdata. 

How to send hidden messages to Google

Microdata exists primarily for search engines.

It is hidden within your HTML code, and visitors will never see it unless they inspect your page’s source code.

Microdata looks like HTML, but it isn’t.

The point of microdata is to describe content.

While Google has gotten a lot better at detecting different parts of content and determining their relevancy, it’s far from perfect.

Using microdata, you can help search engines classify the most important parts of your content.

There are many different types of microdata vocabularies. However, there’s only one that you should use: schema markup.

It’s by far the most complete library of microdata, and furthermore, it’s the only one supported by all major search engines.

Search engine teams recognized the usefulness of microdata a long time ago, but they knew it’d be difficult to incorporate all the different markup vocabularies into their algorithms.

To solve this problem, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo (later joined by Yandex as well), all came together to create a standard microdata library. It’s name is schema.

How rich snippets help your SEO

It’s important to understand that the use of schema markup is not a ranking factor. However, it can affect your SEO results.

Like I said earlier, schema isn’t designed to be used for every single part of your content—only the most important.

Although search engines may, on occasion, use microdata to help determine the overall relevance of your page, the main role of microdata is to help the search engines display more useful data in the search results:

On-page markup helps search engines understand the information on webpages and provide richer results. A shared markup vocabulary makes it easier for webmasters to decide on a markup schema and get maximum benefit for their efforts.

“Richer results” is an appropriate term to use here because the way Google uses schema is to create “rich snippets.”

You’ve likely seen rich snippets before. They include anything other than the plain text that you see in the search results. That includes images, reviews, breadcrumbs, and other information.

How do you think rich snippets affect the click-through rate of results? As you probably guessed, they almost always increase the click-through rate. Right away, this increases search engine traffic.

However, it may also increase search engine rankings in some cases.

Assuming you actually have good content on the page, the visitors that click through to your page will be satisfied and won’t return to their search results. This tells Google that they found what they were looking for.

By reducing “pogo sticking,” it is possible that your rankings will improve. So, although microdata doesn’t directly influence search rankings, it could eventually affect them.

Note: Although rich snippets will show up on any page of the search results, you will get the most benefit from them if you rank on the first page of the search results.

Why schema is an opportunity: I noted early that using microdata is an underutilized tactic. I meant it.

Google loves schema right now and probably will for the foreseeable future.

There is at least one rich snippet in a massive 36.60% of searches:

When something is that popular, you’ve usually fallen behind if you haven’t implemented it.

But here’s the part that will surprise you.

Only 0.30% of domains regularly use schema markup (that’s about 1 in 330):

So if you thought you were alone in avoiding schema, you aren’t.

And there’s still an opportunity to benefit from schema before it becomes a standard practice (which could be quite a while).

The main reasons I think website owners don’t integrate schema into their content are:

1. It looks hard
2. It takes time

Yes, microdata does fall under the technical side of SEO, which scares people. However, you don’t need to be an expert in schema to use it. By the end of this post, you will know everything you need to know to take advantage of it.

Secondly, it does take time. That’s a valid concern, and it’s part of the reason why I don’t use schema as much as I should.

However, if your site is in a niche where schema markup is important, you can’t ignore it. Once you get familiar with it, adding schema tags will only take a few minutes per post, which is well worth the benefits.

A word of warning: Just because you use schema markup in your content doesn’t guarantee that Google will create rich snippets for you. If you’ve implemented it correctly, you will usually get the rich snippets after a brief waiting period, but it’s not a guarantee.

The most common schema markup

Here’s the main reason why schema is scary: there are thousands of terms in the Schema.org library.

Who has time to learn what they all mean?

Very few people.

The good news is that you don’t need to know what they all mean. You just need to get used to the most common terms.

Let’s learn them now…

i) “itemscope”: This is the simplest, but one of the most common schema tags you’ll use.

It’s a boolean term, meaning that you don’t have to (read: can’t) assign a value to it.

Instead, you put it inside a “div” tag (or similar, e.g., “span”, “html”, etc.), to indicate that all the content within that tag is about the same topic.

Here’s an example:

Avatar

Director: James Cameron (born August 16, 1954)

Science fiction

Trailer

Putting “itemscope” in the div tag indicates that the content inside of it is all related. In this case, it’s about the movie Avatar.

Because the itemscope markup was included, Google now knows that the movie was directed by James Cameron and that it falls under the science fiction genre.

ii) “itemtype”: This markup term tells search engines that the content within the HTML tag is about a certain type of item. It is not a boolean term, which means that you do have to assign a value to it.

However, that value needs to come from the schema library. Content can be defined as certain “types.” You’ll need to get the type from the Schema.org library.

The item types are the top level terms on that page. We’ll get to the child terms within each of them soon.

Here are some of the most common itemtypes:

If none of these are applicable to your business, you will have to find one on the giant list. While this will take a bit of time now, you’ll find that you use the same one(s) over and over again.

Ready to see it in action? Let’s continue with the example from before:

Avatar

Director: James Cameron (born August 16, 1954)

Science fiction

Trailer

Now, the itemtype term has been added to the overall div tag. The value is equal to the URL of the type, which in this case is a movie.

Again, you can get the type and the URL from the Schema.org library.

iii) “itemprop”: This final common tag is where things get really interesting. Almost all “items” in the schema library have “properties” that can be defined.

The “itemprop” tag, as the name suggests, lets you define these properties.

This is probably the part that seems the most complex, but it’s fairly painless.

Go to that URL that you defined with “itemtype.” In the case of our example, it was for the movie type.

What you’ll see is a list (usually a large one) of properties that you could potentially use.

Note that you always have the option of including as many or as few properties as you like.

Let’s look at how you’d use the itemprop tag in an example:

Avatar

Director: James Cameron (born August 16, 1954)
Science fiction
Trailer

Notice how the itemprop term is added to HTML tags that are within the div that itemtype defines.

There’s nothing too complicated about how it works. The “name” tag defines the name of the product being discussed, which is why it is placed in the h1 tag.

The “genre” tag defines the genre of the movie, which is why it is put in the span that contains the genre.

Summing up the most common schema markup: All you really need to know in order to use schema is how these three terms work.

The more you dig into it, the more you will discover how to include things such as breadcrumb markup:

I suggest starting small and then searching for tutorials on how to create specific types of rich snippets once you have the basics down.

Option 1: Use a plugin

Understanding schema is one thing, but knowing how to use it is another.

Like I said earlier, you’ll typically use the same tags over and over again, which is a good thing.

If you’re using WordPress, the easiest way to use schema, by far, is to use the Schema Creator plugin by Raven.

You can either download it from that link or go to “add plugins” in your WordPress dashboard and search for “schema.” The plugin should be the first result:

Once you install the plugin, you don’t need to do anything special.

When you go to the post or page editor for any content on your site, you’ll notice a little panel with the title “schema creator form” below the text editor:

This plugin makes adding schema as simple as possible.

You can select one of the main schema types for your content. Depending on which one you choose, different text boxes will come up.

After that, you just need to fill in each of them one-by-one with appropriate values and click “insert” for the schema to be added to your page’s HTML code.

Although this plugin is great, it has its limitations. It obviously doesn’t list all of the potential properties for a schema type. If you want to get more specific, you may have to add some schema manually later.

However, the properties that it does prompt you to fill out are by far the most common and most important when it comes to creating rich snippets.

Option 2: Use Google’s schema generator

I know that most of my readers use WordPress, but many do not.

This option will work for anyone, regardless of which content management system you use.

Since the search engines recognize that schema markup can help them produce better results for searchers, they want to make it as easy as possible.

Not shockingly, Google created a free simple tool for webmasters called the Structured Data Markup Helper.

Using the tool is very simple. Start by inputting a website URL into the URL textbox and then picking one of the main types of articles:

Then click on “start tagging.” That’s step 1 of 3.

Step 2 involves actually applying the schema markup to your content.

The tool will load a copy of the webpage into the left panel and load the most important schema properties into the right panel (for the type that you picked).

When you highlight text on the page (left click and drag), a small menu will automatically pop-up. It will have a list of properties that you can assign to the part of the page you just selected:

You’ll notice on the right that some properties are “required.”

Technically, it’s not required. You can still produce valid schema even if you skip one.

That being said, if you exclude any important values, you may lower your chance of getting rich snippets (depending on which one you omit).

Keep highlighting and adding as many properties as you can and want. Once you’re done, move on to the final step by clicking the red “create HTML” button in the top right.

This will generate a new source code for the page, which includes everything that you had before—plus the new markup.

The trickiest part here is actually putting the markup on your website.

If you have a content management system (CMS) that is based purely on static page files, it’s easy. Just click the “download” button in the top right, which will let you save a full copy of the code. Replace your existing website page with this new code.

Other CMSs are not so simple.

Some, like WordPress, divide your content into different parts. You have full access to the body copy in your page editor, but the header for each page is contained in a theme file.

Some schema needs to be put in the header, which means you will have to add it into your theme file. If you do this wrong, you can mess up your website. Unless you have a lot of experience, you may need to hire a developer for this.

Alternatively, just use schema in the body copy.

If you go back to the tool results, you can scroll down the new source code and see any added schema in yellow:

You can manually copy and paste this into the HTML of your CMS’s page editor.

Option 3 (for expert SEOs): Skip the tools

The first two tools that I’ve shown you are great. They can save you a lot of time and effort doing tedious tasks.

In addition, they’ll produce more reliable markup than most SEOs can.

The problem with tools is that they have limited options. You may want to add a property that is not supported by the tool. Or you may want to make a quick change later on.

Instead of giving up or going through the whole process again, you can always add the schema manually.

It seems obvious, but I wanted to mention it so that you keep’ll it in mind for quick edits.

It’s easy to mess up schema unless you do this…

When you mess up HTML or CSS code on your site, it’s obvious.

You either end up with a broken web page, or something that looks terrible because it lost all of its styling.

But if you mess up your schema markup, the only ones who will notice are the search engines. Remember that schema never affects what the visitor sees unless you also mess up the existing HTML tags while you’re adding schema terms.

The reason why it’s important to have working schema is because if you don’t, you can’t get your rich snippets, which defeats the entire purpose.

The best way to check the validity of your schema is by using another Google tool called the structured data testing tool.

It’s very simple to use: just copy and paste your entire source code (HTML) into the left panel of the tool. Then click “validate”:

Alternatively, if you’ve already published the page with schema, you can use “fetch URL” instead of pasting the source code.

Either way, once you click “validate,” the right panel will quickly let you know if you have any errors. If everything is in order, each section will be green. If there are errors, they will appear in red.

Putting schema into action (step-by-step examples)

If you understand everything perfectly at this point, you’re a very fast learner.

Most people will understand the gist of schema, but it’s hard to fully understand it until you actually see it in action.

So, in this final section, we’re going to look in great detail at a few common examples of where SEOs would use schema.

First off, when should a website use schema?

The same features or types of content come up over and over again:

You’ll notice that when you search for information about a movie, the whole page is typically covered in rich snippets.

As an SEO, you’ll be exposed to a variety of content. I’ve picked three that you will come across very frequently:

• product reviews
• local business pages
• website articles

i) Product reviews: One of the most effective rich snippets are those little star ratings below a title in search results. They stand out and attract a lot of extra clicks.

I googled a review term for the first product that came to mind:

long tail pro review

Without looking at the articles, you’d probably click the one that I have in a box in the above picture. It has multiple pieces of markup:

• star rating
• numerical rating
• author name
• date of review (recent is highly important to most searchers)

So let’s say that we owned the first page in the results (cloudincome).

If I was using WordPress, I’d just use the schema plugin, but in this case, let’s use the Google markup helper.

I’d start by picking the most appropriate type of content, which is a product/product review, and then putting the URL of the article into the box.

Note that as soon as you get to the next page, you’ll see that certain properties are already labeled as “required”, so let’s start with those:

The “name” property exists for all items. It’s a general schema tag that describes the subject. In this case, I applied it to the title, but you could also apply it to part of the title—“Long Tail Pro.”

But what about the properties in the right side? For example:

• reviewer
• review date
• price

Since there was no author, date, or price on the page, there was nothing that I could select to bring up the menu to assign values to those properties.

In those cases, you need to use the “add missing tags” button at the bottom of the right section.

When you click the button, a window will pop up. You’ll start by picking a tag type (one of the item properties) and then assigning it a value.

You can click the “add another” link to add as many as you need.

Here’s what it looked like when I was done:

After clicking “Save,” you’ll see that all the data items are updated in the right panel.

Once you are satisfied, click “create HTML” in order to get your fresh code.

Again, your next steps will depend on which CMS you are using.

If possible, just download the file, and upload it to your site.

If you’re using a CMS where that’s not possible, highlight and copy the relevant HTML (look for the highlights), and paste them into the HTML of your page:

Alternatively, you could also try to create a custom page.

ii) Local business: Local SEO can also benefit from using schema markup.

As an example, I searched for:

chicago landscaper

Yelp uses schema intelligently to add star ratings, numerical ratings, and a number of reviews.

Look at the Diaz Brother’s site (a few entries down from the top). Despite being a horribly designed and unoptimized website, it still ranks fairly well for this search. With a simple redesign and some schema, I’m sure that it would overtake the results appearing above it.

Again, let’s visit the structured data markup tool and enter the URL we’re using as an example. The type of page this time is “local businesses.”

On the next step, let’s start off with the main properties (name, image, and telephone).

I selected the top header logo as the “name,” and the tool automatically uses the image’s alt tag for the property’s value.

In addition, I highlighted the only picture on the page for the “image” property and the phone number for the “telephone” property:

Obviously, the webpage itself is missing a lot of crucial information that it should really have (like hours of operation and address).

In this case, we’d have to add them by using the “add missing tags” button at the bottom.

Occasionally, you will come across a property for which you won’t be sure what to enter for the value. That’s when you’ll have to look it up on Schema.org.

For our example page, I added:

• Opening hours > day of week – Values are added in two-letter acronyms. They can be separated by commas or by a dash (e.g., Mo-Su is for all 7 days).
• Email
• URL
• Aggregate rating > rating value - an average rating out of 5 given by past customers or website users
• aggregate rating > count - the number of customers who rated the product

Once we’re happy with how our sidebar of properties looks, we can create our final HTML code:

From there, it’s just a matter of adding the new schema into our actual webpage.

iii) Article: Just about anyone can use the article type for schema. Any blog post could be classified as an article.

You don’t get any fancy star ratings with this type, but you can get an image as well as a date and an author name included.

This is essentially what Google authorship was intended to do (back when it was still a thing).

While it probably isn’t as effective as schema for more specialized content types, it can still be worth your time.

So let’s go through an example of an article I published a while ago on Quick Sprout: 5 Modern Keyword Research Methods to Uncover Hidden Gems.

Again, we start with Google’s markup helper. This time, we select “Articles” for the page type:

The one great thing about marking up an article is that it’s dead simple to do. None of the properties are particularly complicated to understand or tag.

I highlighted and tagged all of the main properties:

• Name (the title)
• Author (my name)
• Date (published date)
• Image
• Article body (highlight article text and then tagged)

Once I was happy with the properties I selected, I clicked through to the final step:

One final thing that I haven’t shown you is how to test your markup, so let’s do that now.

If you click the “finish” button on the final page, a pop-up will come up with your next steps.

It contains a link to the structured data testing tool:

I pasted the new source code into the left side of the tool. Even though I used the helper tool as I was supposed to, I still got an error:

Clicking the “error” warning expands that section of the results. Once I scrolled to the bottom of it, I saw that it said my headline was missing:

Clicking the headline brought up the relevant part of my HTML code. To fix this error, I had to replace the name property with the headline property, as shown below:

Once I re-validated the results, the error disappeared:

Now I could update my article with the proper schema.

Conclusion

Every little edge you can get when it comes to SEO can be the difference between a bit of search traffic and a ton of traffic.

That’s why it’s so important to take advantage of opportunities such as schema markup once you find out they exist.

Schema markup can lead to rich snippets, which will give you an instant boost to your organic search traffic.

If you read every word in this post, then you know what schema is and how to implement it on your site(s).

I encourage you to apply it on a small scale first and then adapt it on a larger scale if you’re happy with the results.

I know it’s an intimidating subject, so if you have any comments or questions, let me know in a comment below, and I’ll try to sort things out for you.

Source Quick Sprout http://ift.tt/1F1Gvi6