Local SEO and hCard Microformatting
I was going to write an article about optimising your Google Maps listing, but a recent video on WebProNews alerted me to something called hCard Microformats. This is something I’d never heard of before, and feeling a little daft for not knowing something I asked around the office, and it seems I wasn’t the only one living in ignorance.
So what is hCard Microformat?
Basically hCard Microformat is a way of coding contact information to make it accessible for other parsing tools to extract the information. In other words, with hCard microformatting your web browser can easily recognise and then extract this information to transfer into your address book, or even mobile telephone. How useful is that?
There is some evidence that Google recognises hCard microformatting when crawling websites, though this has never been confirmed. However, we do know that in 2007, Google Maps started to use the technology, to enable you to export a Google Maps search result to your address book.
Why use hCard Microformat?
There are many reasons why you should be using this technology. It increases usability, which should never be ignored. In my opinion, if it makes contacting a business or company easier for the end user then it should be used, regardless of whether it makes any difference to your Google listings.
But, it could make a difference to your Google Maps listing, inasmuch as an hCard can tell Google without any ambiguity that this address is the exact address of your business.
So, what code do I need?
Well, this is the tricky part. The code is quite complicated (well, for me anyhow…) which is why I am so grateful that someone much cleverer than me has built an hCard Creator. How easy is that? The one thing to remember is that hCards require the name property, so you will have to change things slightly.
I did it for Creare Communications:
<div id=”" class=”vcard”>
<a class=”url fn org” href=”http://www.crearecommunications.co.uk/”>Creare Communications</a>
<div class=”adr”>
<div class=”street-address”>16a Church Street</div>
<span class=”locality”>Lutterworth</span>,
<span class=”region”>Leicestershire</span>,
<span class=”postal-code”>LE17 4AT</span>
<span class=”country-name”>UK</span>
</div>
<div class=”tel”>0116 250 5455</div>
</div>
Creating this output:
Simples…
To make all this truly useful you can download Ooomph: A Microformats Toolkit from Mix Online.
This means that you don’t have to rely on the end user having add-ons installed on their browser. Follow the instructions for downloading the Source Code, and away you go.
For more information about hCard Microformatting visit microformats.org.
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