Microformats
In this article, we will learn about microformats and their impact. We will define the different types of microformats and what their functions are. We will also discuss the benefits and cons of using microformats on your website.One of the first steps to understand what microforms are would be, to begin with, the definition. Erick Mcgehearty defines Microformats are a part of HTML markup. It’s an extended markup. It is additional metadata that can be added to some content on your website. You can put microformat tags around certain content on your website, such as
• Dates, times and places of events
• Contact information such as the address and phone
number of your business.
When we read complex definitions, in some cases, we do not understand their meaning, especially if we are not familiar with the context. In this case, when we speak about microformats, there are technical words such as metadata. But what is metadata? The easy explanation is that the metadata is data that describes other data. We can define microformats as elements that help us organise our information to clarify our code to be easier to read for the machine and an external person developing a better performance of our website.
One of the examples that we can identify based on real-life is that years ago, to see the times of a movie in the cinema or the rating comments. You should access different websites and choose which schedule is better and which cinema you have more near your location. These days, this problem is solved with a simple google search. We can access the schedules, the rating of the movie and which is the closest cinema in our research with one click away. This is due to the use of microformats.
Following the next steps, we need to talk about the history of microformats and why they were created. Microformats are an element intended to bring order to the web. At the end of the decade of the 90s, a tendency began to appear to separate the structure from the content, that is, the structure of the HTML and the CSS. The main problem is that when a machine enters a web page, it does not know the difference between the personal data of a simple text. But, on the other hand, a human being can observe the difference in the code. The people in charge of working on W3C have the objective of designing a semantic web; microformats is an intermediate step towards that semantic web. Furthermore, microformats are open and decentralised and are available to everyone.
At present, these elements serve to make it easier for you to be found on search engines such as Google. For example, suppose you want to search for information on where to eat sushi near you in London. In this case, microformats are great to help access data more straightforwardly on Google. Faster and easier. WordPress automatically includes microformats in your web pages when creating a website with them.
The next step we need to take is to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of microformats. This element has both negative and positive things when we use it on our web pages.
- Google is becoming more time-sensitive, real-time search. This means that microformats effectively give more information to Google, improving your search listing in less time. They make sharing and reusing information more accessible across different applications and websites. In addition, it makes it easier for Google to extract the information already on the page. For example, if you have your address on your website, the microformats will tell Google precisely what it is, and its meaning.
- Ultimately microformats allow more interaction between your website, other websites, and different applications.
- Make it easier for others to understand and reuse the extra information about your content. With the microformats, your data is easy to use and more readable. The difference between plain text and your personal information is more apparent, for example, with the microformat Hcard.
- Improving the semantic value of your content means that your code is more accessible for the web browser, and it’s creating an optimisation website. Understanding the semantic meaning of microformats allows the document outline to be structured in detail. This helps the reader to visualise better and understand the content.
- Webspiders like Googlebot make use of them in site indexing.
Kramer Caswell, in his article, Do microformats help my SEO? Explains that Googlebot now has more information to crawl on with the introduction of microformats and schema markups. Your microformats can introduce more content and provide data on the description of the article, who wrote the article, who published the report, the website URL and more – thus producing more value to a Google user, which is the main search criteria for the Googlebot. That means that the article is best structured and most straightforward. - Compatible with most commonly used web browsers such as Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Internet Explorer, Opera, We can use microformats in most web browsers with any inconvenience that helps the user find information more accessible.
We know that microformats are beneficial for web pages, but we must also know the disadvantages. Then we will talk about why using microformats can be harmful in different aspects.
- Microformats are dependent rather than standalone format. To use a microformat, XHTML must also be supported in the host document. The microformats are compatible with the XHTML language, this system is needed so that the microformats can be read by the machine and thus develop their qualities, that is to say, that the microformats are not a new language, they take advantage of the labels and standard XHTML attributes for assigning semantic information to portions of code.
- Verbose
Using the same format for human and machine consumption, services may become much more bandwidth-intensive. This means that your code will probably become longer and take up more space in your code reader. Sometimes, if we abuse these elements, it is more difficult for the server to read. - Harvestable
Microformats are open conventions that seek to apply semantic value to XHTML content.
Risk of codified content being successfully harvested for less than desirable purposes.
Concern for the abuse of hCard for spamming purposes is of particular concern. All the information that we place on our website will be easily sortable and understandable by all those who come to our website, whether they are people or search engine robots that analyse the content of our pages. However, this is a double-edged sword because all that information is available to third parties who may have bad intentions with our personal information.
When we talk about microformats, we must also talk about SEO. What is SEO? According to the website, moz.com SEO stands for search engine optimisation, a set of practices designed to improve the appearance and positioning of web pages in organic search results. In other words, it is the process of enhancing your site to increase its visibility when people search for your products or services. Microformats have an essential connection with SEO for two main reasons: the user experience and creating a more personal and unique web page.
- Microformats can significantly benefit a web page. This is due to the user experience. What is the user experience? The user experience, also called user experience, or simply UX is defined as the set of factors and elements related to a user’s interaction concerning a product or service. In this situation, microformats help the user interact more straightforwardly with the web page so they obtain the necessary or unnecessary information in a comfortable way that can be very beneficial. For example, we can interact with the user, leaving comments or reviews.
- There are millions of web pages worldwide, many of them very similar, monotonous and not very creative. Creating a personalised and unique web page is not an easy task, which is why microformats are beneficial in this regard. This is because these elements will allow you to customise your website to the company’s taste, and that unique design will cause a good impression on the user.
In the last step of this article, we will talk in a general way about the different types of microformats that we have at our disposal and what they are used for. Each microformat has a specific kind of information. For example, microformats allow you to add the name and address of a person. On the other hand, if it is a product, they will enable you to add its price or purchase options. In the previous image, we can see the different types of microformats and their use. The microformats shown in the image are the most used for web pages. However, there is an excellent variety of them not exposed in this article. In the pdf exposed in the seminar, we can find an example of the correct use of microformats. This exercise was exposed because writing the code of a web page can become confusing.
One of the examples that we usually make a mistake is that we write personal data or addresses without using microformats, using other attributes such as address element to include the address. This is not good for SEO and user experience, and it is not the correct way of writing the code of your website. To conclude, microformats are a beneficial tool that we must implement in future projects such as the small business website. One of the main reasons is that if we want to attract more clients, the information must be more accessible. It is currently widespread to access internet search engines to find the information we need. That’s why we use microformats to benefit our website.
