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Yoast: Google & Microformats: Drive More Traffic
In: web resources
27 Feb 2010Anyone that has spent time trying to improve their click through rates (
CTR ) from search engine results pages (
SERP s) will tell you that Google algorithmically picks the snippet displayed for a given page; it’s not something you can always control. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t always display the snippet that will give you the best conversion rate.
However, the use of microformats, a set of agreed upon
HTML conventions used to describe content, can give you more control of the snippets displayed in Google
SERP s. Once your site is properly using rich snippets, you will see them also appear in your Google custom search and Google site search results, so this technique is definitely worth exploring if you use those tools as well.
The changes are easy to implement for WordPress, Magento and other software, let’s take a look at some use cases based on hReview, hCard, hProduct and XFN:
Businesses & Organizations:
| Property | Description |
| name (fn/org) | The name of the business. If you use microformats, you should use both fn and org, and ensure that these have the same value. |
| url | Link to a web page on the business’s site. |
| address (adr) | The location of the business. Can contain the sub properties street address, locality, region, postal-code, and country-name. |
| tel | The telephone number of the business or organization. |
| geo | Specifies the geographical coordinates of the location. Includes two elements: latitude and longitude. Optional. |
Could be marked up as follows:
<div class="vcard"> <span class="fn org">L'Amourita Pizza</span> Located at <div class="adr"> <span class="street-address">123 Main St</span>, <span class="locality">Albuquerque</span>, <span class="region">NM</span>. </div> <span class="geo"> <span class="latitude"> <span class="value-title" title="37.774929" /> </span> <span class="longitude"> <span class="value-title" title="-122.419416" /> </span> </span> Phone: <span class="tel">206-555-1234</span> <a href="http://pizza.example.com/" class="url">http://pizza.example.com</a> </div>
Learn more about the business and organization markup at webmaster central.
Products:
| Property | Description |
| brand | The brand of the product for example, ACME. |
| category | The product category for example, “Books—Fiction”, “Heavy Objects”, or “Cars”. |
| description | Product description |
| name (fn) | Product name |
| price | Floating point number. Can use currency format. |
| photo | URL of product photo |
| url | URL of product page |
Could be marked up as follows:
<div class="hproduct"> Brand: <span class="brand">ACME</span> <span class="category">Heavy objects</span> <h1 class="fn">Large all-purpose anvil</h1> On sale for <span class="price">$99.95</span>. <span class="description">If you need an object to drop from a height, the classic A23859 anvil from ACME is the way to go.</span> <a href="http://anvil.example.com" class="url">Anvil details page</a> </div>
Becomes:
Learn more about the product markup at webmaster central.
People:
| Property | Description |
| name (fn) | Name |
| nickname | Nickname |
| photo | An image link |
| title | The person’s title (for example, Financial Manager) |
| role | The person’s role (for example, Accountant) |
| url | Link to a web page, such as the person’s home page |
| affiliation (org) | The name of an organization with which the person is associated (for example, an employer). If fn and org have the exact same value, Google will interpret the information as referring to a business or organization, not a person. |
| friend | Identifies a social relationship between the person described and another person. |
| contact | Identifies a social relationship between the person described and another person. |
| acquaintance | Identifies a social relationship between the person described and another person. |
| address (adr) | The location of the person. Can have the sub properties street address, city, region, postal-code, and country-name. |
Could be marked up as:
<div class="vcard"> My name is <span class="fn">Bob Smith</span>, but people call me <span class="nickname">Smithy</span>. Here is my home page: <a href="http://www.example.com" class="url">www.example.com</a>. I live in <span class="adr"> <span class="locality">Albuquerque</span>, <span class="region">NM</span> </span> and work as an <span class="title">engineer</span> at <span class="org">ACME Corp</span>. My friends: <a href="http://darryl-blog.example.com" rel="friend">Darryl</a>, <a href="http://edna-blog.example.com" rel="friend">Edna</a> </div>
Becomes:
Learn more about markup for people at webmaster central.
Reviews:
| Property | Description |
| itemreviewed (item) | The item being reviewed. In microformats, can contain the element name (fn). |
| rating | A numerical quality rating for the item (for example, 4). You can indicate a rating scale by specifying best (default: 5) and worst (default: 1). More information about review ratings. |
| reviewer | The author of the review. |
| dtreviewed | The date that the item was reviewed in ISO date format. |
| description | The body of the review. |
| summary | A short summary of the review. |
Could be marked up as:
<div class="hreview"> <span class="item"> <span class="fn">L’Amourita Pizza</span> </span> Reviewed by <span class="reviewer">Ulysses Grant</span> on <span class="dtreviewed"> Jan 6<span class="value-title" title="2009-01-06" /> </span>. <span class="summary">Delicious, tasty pizza on Eastlake!</span> <span class="description">L'Amourita serves up traditional wood-fired Neapolitan-style pizza, brought to your table promptly and without fuss. An ideal neighborhood pizza joint.</span> Rating: <span class="rating">4.5</span> </div>
Learn more about markup for reviews at webmaster central.
Interested in getting started? Well there’s no reason not to start using microformats as much as possible already; semantic markup is always good for search engine optimization:
- Update your markup (make sure it’s valid) and use the Quix bookmarklet to check your page, by entering ‘snippet’ to submit the current page to Google Rich Snippets test tool.
- Getting the “Insufficient data to generate the preview” error? Then make sure that there are no errors in the markup (go back to step one) or check that you are using enough data to generate the snippet preview, so check the microformat syntax again.
- Finally, let Google know that you’re an early adopter.
So who’s using microformats in this and other ways? Brands like Mashable, Yahoo!, Yelp, Technorati, SearchMonkey, LinkedIn, Urbanspoon and many more. If you’re interested in digging deeper into the future of microformats as they relate to web analytics as well, Dennis Mortensen from Yahoo! has a great post on what the future may hold.
Google & Microformats: Drive More Traffic is a post from Joost de Valk‘s Yoast – Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don’t want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!
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10 Responses to Yoast: Google & Microformats: Drive More Traffic
xxrebel.revoltxx
March 8th, 2010 at 8:35 pm
It must be some sort of computer program similar to the one that does the BCS bowl games or something? When you do your search by default the results come back by relevance to the search words used in the search box and the tags you put as search words for your video(and maybe title also?). Then you can also search by view count, rating, or date added these last three are easy to figure but the first and default or sort by relevance is a little hard to figure out. Lets take a random youtube search here say I put endlessmountain in the search box and press enter and I get Your channel at top followed by 4 of your videos then supafaith-vision victory-supafaith. Now supafaith has you as one of his tags in all most all his videos(congratulations), and VV has you in about this video part under "other informative youtubers"(congratulations). Now this is were it gets tricky the number 5 vid has 83 ratings at 5 star 2000+ views and is higher on the search list than VV video listed at number 6, 3000+ ratings of 5 star and 30,000+views, but then the number 7 video is supafaith only 76 ratings at 5 stars,and 4000+ views.
So it must be the relevance of the tags with some formula that has less to do with views and ratings, that puts a higher emphasis on rating
junior
March 16th, 2010 at 4:08 am
Right now $0.49
E.M.Bed
March 19th, 2010 at 4:35 am
.block >* {
display:block;
}
The > refers to children but not grandchildren.
The * is like a wildcard.
So every immediate child of this class will have this style.
Easy to demonstrate:
<head>
<style type=text/css>
.block > * {
display:block;
}
</style>
</head>
<div class=block>
<a href="#">Block style</a>
<input type=text value="Block Style">
<textarea>Block Style</textarea>
</div>
Now surround these children with a paragraph tag so that they are now grandchildren:
<head>
<style type=text/css>
.block > * {
display:block;
}
</style>
</head>
<div class=block>
<p>
<a href="#">Block style</a>
<input type=text value="Block Style">
<textarea>Block Style</textarea>
</p>
</div>
So the style applies to immediate children only.
So watch what happens when we extend this:
<head>
<style type=text/css>
.block > * *{
display:block;
}
</style>
</head>
<div class=block>
<p>
<a href="#">Block style</a>
<input type=text value="Block Style">
<textarea>Block Style</textarea>
</p>
</div>
Now both children and grandchildren have the style!
So that should enable you to do what you wanted I hope!
Remove the style to see the difference.
I'm with Stupid
March 22nd, 2010 at 4:55 pm
D
109
Steve O
March 23rd, 2010 at 11:42 pm
yes & no
25% HClO2= 250,000mg/L of HClO2, correct!
(a 4 decimal shift)
===============
0.08% ClO2 concentration does not equal 80.0 mg/L,
0.08 %
0.08g / 100g
0.8 g / 1000 g = 0.8 g per litre
0.8 g per litre 1000 mg/ gram =
800 mg / liter
( a four decimal shift)
frankmoore_web
March 24th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Have you tried a program like ESRI's ArcView?
Sturm Vogel
April 24th, 2010 at 7:31 am
I'll use hurricane Katrina.
Tropical depression twelve formed on August 23, 2005 at:
23.2°N 75.5°W
Tropical storm Katrina formed on August 24, 2005 at:
24.7°N 76.7°W
Hurricane Katrina formed on August 25, 2005 at:
26.1°N 79.9°W
FYI: Latitude is given by °N or °S of the Equator and longitude is given by °E or °W of the Prime Meridian.
The highest latitudes are 90°N (Geographic North Pole, Magnetic South Pole) and 90°S (Geographic South Pole and Magnetic North Pole).
The highest longitudes are 180°E and 180°W, which meet at the International Date Line (IDL).
eematters
April 30th, 2010 at 6:46 am
RTCC stands for remote tap changer controller.
The panel may contain tap position display, display to indicate the progress of tap change etc. RTCC panel is generally located in the control room.
Why don't you visit http://www.powergridindia.com?
Max M
May 9th, 2010 at 3:50 am
The only way to use Google Adsense with youtube is to become a youtube partner. Go to youtube.com and scroll to the bottom of the page. Click on Adsense.
Rafael Federer
May 15th, 2010 at 3:32 am
just look at a phisical map of Nigeria