What exactly are microformats and how can they help my SEO? If you’re like many SEOs or developers I know, you’ve probably heard some talk about microformats, but you’ve probably got some questions.
You may remember an old blog post of mine where I lamented that nobody really supports hCard. Thankfully the day has finally come where sites are supporting hCard, but it’s not because of my previous bitching. It’s because of SEO and search engines.
Sometime last year, Google announced what they call “rich snippets”. Rich snippets are Google’s way of presenting more useful information from your site right in the search results snippet. They look something like this:
Shortly after we started seeing them in search results for sites like Yelp and Linkedin. Then, at SMX advanced in Seattle, Google let it be known that they’d soon be rolling out rich snippets across all websites whenever the algorithm decided that they would be useful. This is very similar to how they treated site links.
This is great news! Since preliminary studies have shown that things like rich snippets increase click throughs, the obvious question becomes “how the heck can I get them on my site?”
Microformats are the answer. Now, before you go thinking “oh great, I’ve got to learn another programming language, I’m still struggling with jQuery” you can relax. Implementing microformats is simple – and it’s all done with HTML that you already know.
While there are several types of microformats, Google currently only supports 6 major ones. Those are:
hcard – for marking up business card or profile information
hReview – for dealing with individual user reviews
hReview-aggregate – basically a summary of hReviews (think, overall or average rating)
hProduct – for marking up products, prices, and all things e-commerce
hCalendar – pretty self explanatory, dates and appointments
hRecipe – also pretty explanatory. Recipes and ingredients
If your site deals with any of those categories, you should explore the possibilities of using microformats. There’s a great guide over a Microformats.org (which I won’t copy here, so go take a look when you’re done reading) but when it comes down to it, implementation is as simple as tagging your content with classes.
Here’s an example. Instead of just typing Name: Ryan Jones the hCard way to do this would be:
<span class=”fname” >Ryan Jones</span>
This tells Google, or anybody else for that matter, that my “full name” is “Ryan Jones.” I can use the same style markup on my phone number, address, email, picture, homepage URL, and even nickname.
So what are the SEO benefits? Let’s look at an example.
Here’s 2 search results from LinkedIn. One has microformats, the other doesn’t. Which one do you think is more useful? Which one are you more likely to click?
Without Rich Snippet (no microformats)
With Rich Snippet (has microformats)
The 2nd snippet here not only looks better, but it’s way less ambiguous than the first one – especially since there’s at least 25 Ryan Jones’s on LinkedIn. It goes beyond the generic LinkedIn META description and pulls in basic information. In this case, it tells you I’m from the Detroit area and that I work at ZAAZ.
The difference is even more astounding when you look at something with reviews. Let’s look at a rich snippet that uses both hReviews AND hRecipe.
Which of the following results would you be more tempted to click on?
Here, ThaiTable out ranks FoodNetwork for the query “pad thai” – but I’d be willing to bet that FoodNetwork.com is getting more traffic from Google for this query.
Ok, I’ve tagged my site, can I test it? Yes! Google webmaster tools offers a Rich Snippet Tool that will not only show you a preview of your site’s rich snippet, but it also tells you what information Google sees available.
Microformats may not directly increase your search engine rankings, but they can still be a vital part of your SEO strategy. Ranking on page 1 of Google isn’t all there is to SEO – you’ve still got to entice the searcher to click. Rich snippets may be just thing to do that.
Go ahead, give ‘em a try. I’d love to hear your success stories here in the comments.
Several years ago a colleague of mine interviewed a candidate for an SEO position who recommended paying people in other cities to search for your term and then click on your site. He said a good policy would be to make employees do this whenever they’re out of town as well. He attempted to back up his claims by referencing the fact that Google tracks historical click data, but was eventually thanked for his time.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Yes, it IS true that Google may use SERP click data. They even filed a patent on doing it (If you’re too lazy to read the patent, SEOmoz has a nice write up of it.)
Before we freak out and start creating Mechanical Turk jobs to click on our results, let’s apply some computer science logic to this.
IF Google used what results you clicked on as a major factor in their SEO algorithm, what would happen? It would start a completely self serving cycle. The results already on the front page would get more clicks, and rank higher – getting them even more clicks! It’d be a vicious cycle. Sure, you could introduce some randomness to it, but where would you pull those random results from?
You couldn’t just throw completely random results at the front page and let the click history sort it out. The top 5 results would get clicks regardless of what was there, and the overall search quality would be terrible. So IF you wanted to do the randomness to prevent the above cycle, you’d have to pull from somewhere. The most likely place would be the results on page 2.
But what factors determine the results on page 2? You can’t use click data here, as results after page 1 get very few clicks – so you’re back to links and on page elements.
And that’s the point I’m trying to make: Even if Google uses historical click data in ranking, links and content are still way more important. In fact, if your links and content aren’t up to snuff, click-rate won’t make one bit of difference.
My advice: Don’t worry about click rate, site speed, or other minor factors. They won’t matter unless your site already ranks well – and that’s the goal you should be focused on.
Raise your hand if you believe that using Google Analytics can affect your site’s SEO rankings. Now raise your other hand if you believe Google Adwords also affects your SEO.
If you’ve got both hands in the air keep them that way, as having your hands off of the keyboard is probably the best SEO strategy for your website right now.
I had been under the impression that Matt Cutts put this myth to rest several times (see video below) however some recent forum threads make it hard to maintain faith about the general public’s SEO opinion. It’s not just SEOs either. I’ve seen this level of thinking with fortune 500 clients as well. In fact, I’ve even seen some analytics platforms use the “don’t share your data with google” angle in their sales pitches. By the way, if you clicked that link I know what you’re thinking and yes, I read black hat forums. Is there something wrong with that?
Sadly, (and chime in if you can think of one) there’s no proper controlled way to test this. Since we can’t scientifically prove that Analytics has no effect on SEO, there’s only a couple of ways we can look at this.
1. We can take Google’s word for it
That’s well and good, but I know exactly what people like Graywolf are going to say here. “Why would Google tell you the truth if they did use it? Wouldn’t that just get you to stop using their products?” And I agree. If you already believe it’s a conspiracy, taking the conspirator’s word for it doesn’t help much. It’s like trying to use the bible to prove God exists. Let’s move on.
2. We can look at anecdotal evidence
People have been claiming ill effects after installing GA for years on webmaster world. But does that make it so, or is it simply a timing or correlation/causation mistake? We’ll never know because webmaster world doesn’t let you list sites for examples, but I’d be willing to bet I can look at any site claiming this and come up with other non GA reasons why the rankings are down.
I’ve been debating this whole post whether or not I want to out some spammy sites, and I’ve decided against it – however for every claim that GA is affecting rank I can name several examples of sites that rank #1 for competitive terms, are pretty spammy in quality, have been ranking #1 for years, and use Google analytics. I could even name a couple of my own sites that fall into this category (I mean come on, who doesn’t test and experiment right?)
So anecdotal evidence didn’t provide much help. I can find some for and some against, but that’s exactly what I expected to find – since if all the anecdotal evidence said the same thing we probably wouldn’t even be asking the question to begin with.
3. We could look at things from Google’s point of view.
When all else fails, this is usually the best bet. WWGD? (site note: maybe I should start selling WWGD wristbands) Whenever I’m in doubt about something in SEO I put on my software engineer hat and think of things from Google’s point of view. To me, it wouldn’t make sense to use Google Analytics data in rankings. There’s several reasons for this.
Google doesn’t need to use your analytics data, their index contains most of it anyway. Think about it. What can google get from your Analytics account that a good index of the web wouldn’t already tell you? They know about all of your pages, they know what sites link to your pages, they know how many clicks you get from search, and they know what keywords you rank for. They also know all of this about all of the sites linking to you. Sure there’s other data they can get from analtyics like paths, funnels, conversion rates, etc – but none of those things really make sense to use in rankings. Think about it, how would what the visitor does once they’re on your site affect whether or not your site is relevant for a term? It wouldn’t!
So just looking at their search index, with a little recursion Google can get all the ranking relevant information without needing analytics – so why use it? From an engineering perspective it would be both slower AND more complex to do so. Plus, what would happen if they ever discontinued analytics? The search engine wouldn’t work without it – and that type of dependency doesn’t fit the Google model of scalable thinking.
It would also be a PR nightmare.
Think about what would happen if word got out that they DID in fact use analytics data? Danny Sullivan would be all over it, Privacy groups would be up in arms, the EFF and ACLU would file lawsuits, the Times would run a front page article, Jesse Jackson would hold a prayer vigil, Graywolf and Pageoneresults would be screaming “I told you so”, and that would bring about the twitter fail whale. They’d never live down the bad PR.
If you don’t think Google takes these things into consideration, perhaps it’s best you raise your hands up in the air too.
You can safely ignore this post. I’m testing something on my server and also playing with word press for iPad. Typing is a pain without a keyboard but I’m getting pretty fast at using my thumbs. Auto spell check is actually helping here (unlike sending a text message where it always screws up my words).
Sadly it looks like I can only attach photos at the bottom so in true blogger fashion, here’s a cat picture.
I’m also wondering if links work. So here’s a link: my softball stats
Interesting after you type “Http:” it brings up a link builder. Wish it just gave that option.
Overall this seems pretty weak. Id like some formatting shortcuts. HTML editing stuff and ability to include images anywhere in a post. I don’t think I’ll be live blogging from my iPad any time soon.
This also concludes my test. This post will be removed in a few days.
I still don’t get the point of bing’s latest Thelma and Louise commercial. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out below:
What exactly are they trying to say? It just came on with the TV on MUTE and here’s the story it told me:
Women are being chased by cops, they look at google, don’t like what it says so they try Bing. Bing gives them directions, and they follow them right off the cliff.
Ok, that can’t be right. Let’s try another interpretation.
Ladies try switching from Google to Bing, then become so frustrated with the quality of Bing’s results that they drive off of a cliff.
Hmm… that doesn’t seem like a good marketing message either.
I really don’t get this commercial. To me the marketing message is just off. It tells me that a.) Bing caused them to drive off a cliff or b.) they’d rather drive off a cliff than use Bing. I don’t think either of those are the message they were going for.
Pro Marketing Tip: It’s usually never* good to show customers killing themselves or dying when using your product.
*unless of course your product is a funeral casket or assisted suicide machine.
SEO Isn’t science. It’s not rocket surgery either, but it’s definitely not science.
I’m not sure if having a computer science degree makes me a scientist or not, but I do know how to spot science. See, science has a definition. According to Wikipedia, that definition is: a systematic enterprise of gathering knowledge about the world and organizing and condensing that knowledge into testable laws and theories.
It’s that last bit that causes all sorts of problems for traditional SEO. We SEOs are pretty good at gathering and organizing knowledge. We’re even better when it comes to sharing it, but when it comes to testable laws and theories we kind of suck.
Ever since Branko’s presentation at SMX (which I liveblogged by the way ) I’ve been thinking about testing and the scientific method – and how little of it we actually do in the SEO community. It prompted me to start testing META descriptions with Alan Bleiweiss. Even though we both “knew” what the result was going to be, we did a scientific test anyway – and that’s what the SEO community needs more of.
The problem though, is that in addition to being technologists, SEOs also have to be marketers – and marketing and science don’t really have the best relationship. Marketing tends to be about making claims whereas science is more about collecting and publishing data. As SEO/Marketers we not only have to do the research, but we have to then go in front of a client and convince them why they should spend money to make changes. Often, data alone isn’t enough to sway a client.
A successful SEO is one who is able to wear a science hat and a marketing hat, but a great SEO is one who knows when to wear each one of those hats.
It’s not that SEO can’t be science, it’s just that we’re not doing a good enough job of making it a science – and that’s bad for the industry. Unverifiable claims are one of the quickest ways to get the snake oil reputation. Science is how that nasty reputation can be avoided.
Unfortunately, many SEOs (myself included) get too caught up in the lifestyle to worry about actually doing SEO. Talking about SEO, doing the conference circuit, and living the A-list twitter life are all things that come to those who make SEO claims – but sometimes we get so caught up in that life and making those claims that we forget to actually test our claims.
Sometimes, it’s our own egos that prevent what we do from being called science. “I’ve been doing this for X years, it works, I don’t need to test that, everybody knows it.” How many times have you said something like that? Read through the comments on Alan’s META description test and count the passionate opinions there that are soley based on ego without any data to support them. There’s quite a few.
The true SEO scientist doesn’t just make a claim. He gathers data, then posts that data for others to examine. The problem though, is that posts full of data don’t get retweeted and they don’t get onto the front page of Sphinn. Posts full of claims however do get lots of retweets.
It’s that community aspect of SEO that’s holding us back from achieving our true potential. I can hear a few people muttering under their breath “Oh, he’s just jealous that he’s not an A-lister” and well, that’s true, but it’s not the motivation for this post. I firmly believe that all the A-list SEO people have earned their status. They did awesome work, wrote great blog posts, and did everything else to earn the success they’re enjoying today.
Science and fandom don’t mix.
The problem with reputation though, is that people stop questioning A-listers. They’re no longer required to produce data or backup their claims. While they’ve deserved that right, it’s not good for science. A-listers and SEO rockstars can be wrong too. Nobody’s perfect. Just look at how many advocated pagerank sculpting several months after Google quietly changed how nofollow worked. (then, look at how many refused to admit they were wrong.)
Pay attention next time Danny Sullivan or Lisa Barone write a blog post. Almost instantly they’ll get 10-12 retweets. (and usually, they deserve them too as they write awesome stuff.) The problem here isn’t the retweets, it’s the amount of people who retweet before they actually had time to read the blog post. If retweets are the social equivalent to links on web pages, then so many people are turning their twitter feeds into free-for-all directories. You wouldn’t recommend a doctor that you’ve never visited, why would you recommend a blog post that you haven’t read? What if Danny’s blog had been hacked to include a Viagra post? I bet he’d still get several blind retweets. Stuff like that doesn’t help SEO get taken seriously as a science.
We’ve all heard that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but in SEO it’s the loudest shouter who gets the attention. Usually, those shouting loud know their shit, but not always. It’s important for SEO that we still continue to scrutinize and think critically about what people are saying – no matter who’s saying it. Everybody makes mistakes.
When we’re dealing with over 200 inputs like in SEO, it’s very easy to mix signals, miss relationships, or confuse correlation and causation. Rather than simply making claims, we as an industry need to focus on becoming more scientific. Don’t be afraid to run tests, share your data, and discuss methodologies. You may be right, you may be wrong, but either way you’ll be starting a scientific discussion in which everyone is bound to learn something – and that will make us all better SEOs.
SEO in its current form is not science. It’s starting to be though. Several great people and companies are attempting to put the science back in SEO, and I’m excited to see where our industry can go once more people get on board.
Update: Google’s Maile Ohye has Confirmed my hypothesis that META descriptions do NOT affect relevancy. But please, still read this post to learn about testing SEO.
Last week after SMX, Alan Bleiweiss started running a META Description Test to see whether or not the META description has any affect on search engine rankings in Google.
The article generated lots of comments, and several SEOs (including Jill Whalen) argued that the META description does affect rankings. Somebody even claimed that Google employee Maile Ohye even said so at SES Toronto, but I was unable to verify this claim. For years, my theory has been otherwise.
From my experience, the best way to come up with a hypothesis for an SEO test is to do just that – think of things from Google’s point of view. This is where knowing how to program can greatly benefit an SEO. Ask yourself “if I were coding a search engine, would this make sense? Would it make my results more useful? How could it be spammed? How would I do it? Is it robust? Does it Scale?” You’ll find that answering those questions from an engine’s point of view will almost never steer you wrong with regard to SEO theory.
I didn’t believe that META descriptions affected rank so I decided to join in with a test of my own. We had just finished listening to a panel talk about testing SEO so testing was still fresh in my mind. I also wanted to keep the test as scientific as possible, so here’s what I did:
I created a new page and set the META description to a Unique Phrase that currently had no results for an exact match.
I then changed the META description of an already established site to also include a different unique phrase. The reason I did this is because Jill argued that new pages and old pages may be treated differently – so I didn’t want any bias in my data.
I then planted several links to both of the sites on various blogs, including the test post you see below this one (which will be removed in a few days.)
On the existing page, Google re-visited the page rather quickly and updated its cache. On the new page, it took just about 24 hours. That was several days ago and the spiders have been back several times since then.
After several days of waiting, neither the new page nor the old page rank for the unique phrases contained solely within their META descriptions. You can verify that by clicking the two “unique phrase” links above.
For the sake of completeness, they don’t rank in Bing either.
No matter what I tried, I was not able to make a page rank solely based upon its meta description.
Do some sites appear to rank for the text in their descriptions? Most likely, but we can’t confuse that correlation with causation.
If your site is properly optimized, the terms and phrases contained within your META description will also be the same terms and phrases used both on your site and in links to your site. Several tests have shown that when people see their search terms in titles and descriptions they tend to click through at higher frequencies (just ask your paid search people about this one!) Therefore, it’s a very common strategy to use the same wording in META descriptions as on the site – which then causes people to use that same wording in links.
Also, when it comes to sites who haven’t changed their META descriptions in a while, a funny thing happens. people scrape that content and use it on their spammy sites. Those people even sometimes link that scraped description back to the original site. In that case, it’s very possible that a site would appear to rank for terms contained within the meta description, but it may not actually be because of the meta description.
I’m glad that my test shows what I thought it would show – not simply because I enjoy being right, but because META descriptions are very easy to spam.
In most cases, Google doesn’t actually use the META description you provided. They prefer instead to use a snippet of text taken off of the page. It all goes back to the same “increase clickthrough when your terms appear” idea mentioned above. This means that users very rarely see the meta description you provide. Google has long said that they don’t like to rank sites based on factors that don’t appear to users (see META keywords) as they often invite spam.
So there’s the results – please leave your insights, comments, or observations in the comments. Also, please run your own tests if you feel fit. I’d love to see your results and compare your findings with my own.
