Microformats as a Form of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
You may have heard people talk about Micrformats. It's the new buzzword of the moment, much like XML was 5 or more years ago, and how AJAX was only just a few years back also.
You may or not, also know what microfomats are, but for the benefit of those who don't they are essentially a means by which to define, and display context specific information on a page, or in code. They are, as best described on the microformats web site itself:
"a set of simple open data format standards that many are actively developing and implementing for more/better structured blogging and web microcontent publishing in general."
How Can Microformats Help with SEO?
In a nutshell: They don't! So why bother you ask yourself? Well, the answer is simple. Search engines are constantly striving to make their mechanisms for crawling the internet more human. They are trying to build applications that think like humands and behave like humans, and as a result, produce the best kind of results in their indexes. They need to ignore the useless and timewasting content and focus on the content that really matter. Well in short, microformats help them do that, and although search engine spiders may not see them as such a consumable asset right now on a web page, in due course they will, and when they do, the advantages to those who implemented early may be huge.
Each time Google Maps is updated, the entire web marvels at the new inventions, tools and functions that Google has developed, and in a slew of cases a whole range of web sites are spawned off of this. Well imagine a time when Google Maps gets updated and it takes advantage of the all the microformat data that has been implemented amonsgt web sites for the purpose of business contact information. This would provide a massive potential boost for ay related business that is riding the wave. And as you know all it takes is the chance to hit one massive wave that can take you on to the tipping point.
Microformat: A Simple Example - hCard
As with everything in SEO, you need to contemplate the utility levels of the function and the content in the sites and pages that you build. Using microformats as another means of search engine optimisation SEO, isn't just another chance to perform some devious act, it is another chance to give logical, coherent and useful information back to actual visitors to the pages you are creating.
The following is the well structured code for a hCard microformat, and then below is the same example laid out and style in CSS. One can see that there are clear advantages to using microformats in being able to clearly identify the same information across an entire web site, somthing that would be both useful for users and for search engine spiders.
<div class="vcard">
<a class=”url fn” href=”http://www.delamainit.com”>Vincent Roman</a>
<div class=”org”>Delamain IT</div>
<div class=”adr”>
<div class=”street-address”>37 Cantelowes Road</div>
<span class=”locality”>London</span>
<span class=”postal-code”>NW1 9XU</span>
</div>
<div class=”tel”>020-7993-8583</div>
</div>
Possibilities: The Way Forward
Really the possibilities for micrformats and their use, both by search engines and others, is endless.
In many respects this is great, and the SEO implications are also obvious, but there are also clear concerns that arise for online privacy. This aside, using microformats consistently, and in a well thought out manner will be another great identifier to search engines about the quality of the site they are visiting and help to differentiate your site from the pack. They may also help spiders separate out very location specific information, where location is an important factor in the relationship with the content on the page, be it information for a business or service, or to specifically identify information about a person in a city or an institution.
Microformats could also be exceedingly handy when it comes to sharing information and also having to scrape that information from web pages for the benefit of some user functionality on your own site. Many of the new Web 2.0 social networks such as Last.FM are integrating Microformat technology.
As another example, drawing the emphasis of book information away from Amazon and putting it back into the hands of the publishers, or librarians, could be a great leap forward in terms of enhancing the quality of information available on the web, using microformats, and that's only just the beginning.
Per se, nobody really knows exactly how microformats will grow and of what ultimate use they will develop into, but then I suppose it is for us to help drive forward their implementation and help to propoagate their general use for the benefit of others so that where developers and optimisers lead, the search engines will follow. Now there's a *crazy* thought!
Find Out More Info About Microformats and SEO
Find out more about micrformats and download extensions for building, testing and rolling them out on your web site at microformats.org.
Also available is the "Microformats: Empowering Your Markup for Web 2.0
If you are interested in SEO services, then please feel free to read up about those that Delamain IT offers, on the search engine optimisation services page.