Microformats and SEO

It has been in discussion for quiet some time now that wether Microformats would play any role in search engine optimization in the near future. To understand how Microformats might come into play in respect to SEO, let us all first understand what Microformats are.

To quote Wikipedia, “A microformat is a web-based approach to semantic markup that seeks to re-use existing XHTML and HTML tags to convey metadata and other attributes.” Basically Microformats enable the use of XHTML and HTML tags in such a way that information on a web page that are actually meant for the users would become clearly comprehensible to software ( search engine robots in perspective to SEO ).

It might sound a bit confusing because all of us know that search engine bots can already read and understand the content of web pages which is the basic foundation of any organic search algorithm, then why do we need Microformats ?

Looking back at the Wikipedia definition, microformats “convey Meta data and other attribute” about the existing content that the search engines are already indexing enablng them to understand exactly what they mean and stand for; basically attach semantics to the information for better processing by software.

Let’s look at an example, my contact information can be displayed as

Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury

SEO Consultant India

09963111179

http://seo-kolkata.blogspot.com

A search engine bot can read this information , index it but it would probably not mean much more than that at this stage. Once we use Microformats for presenting this information, the same code would look like…

Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury

SEO Consultant India

09963111179

http://seo-kolkata.blogspot.com

Now, this is basically a simple use of the hcard ( HTML vcard) Microformat, and because the data is bound within the “vcard” class, search engines would now treat it as my virtual visiting card and interprete
fn as full name
org as organisation
tel as telephone number
url as web address

There are a lot of such mircorformats that add properties and attributes to the data available on a web page, which in turn helps search engine bots better comprehend and process the data.

So how can these Microformats change or effect SEO ?

We all know the main objective of search engines are to serve relevant results. So with enhanced data comprehension ability due to the use of such microformats they would be able to search more relevant results.

Again taking a leaf out of Wikipedia, “processing of microformats enables data items to be indexed, searched for, saved or cross-referenced, so that information can be reused or combined.” Note the point about “Cross-referenced”, I feel that would be one of the key benefits that search engines would have once the usage of microformats become ore common on the web. We already know that search engines are trying to have access to social network data of users ( twitter and Facebook are already in) now once search engines start getting more info on these and also cross reference this data with the data about the users found through other sources, it would probably allow them to weigh the social messages in a much better way.

Use of microformats can be a great help for search engines to parse local queries and serve relevant results.

Google has already announced last year that they are capable to read hProduct Microdata and encourage webmasters to use the same to mark up their products on their website and ecommerce store.

I have a strong feel that th use of Microformats would increase greatly by the end of 2010 and not just that search engines would start using them effectively to increase their search result relevance. While that would definitely be a big enough push for the SEOs to start advocating the use of Microformats, looking at the greater interest of forming a semantic web, it would be great if we start using these wonderful tags from now on and help make the web a better place.

For those of you interested to learn more about the different types of Microformats and their usage check out Microformats.org .