Microsocial: How tiny bits of data can make or break your website

Seen and unseen, tiny bits of data are hard at work on every website. Search engines and social networks are using this information. But are you making them work for you? Microformats, microdata, metadata, microcontent: what are they, what do they do, and how can you use them to attract visitors and improve SEO.

Following the presentation, attendees will leave with answers to the following:
1. What is microdata?
2. How is it influencing social networks?
3. How is it influencing SEO?

Transcript

1. Microsocial
   How tiny bits of data can make
   or break your website
   Shannon Smith
   Social Capital Conference
   All rights reserved © Café Noir Design Inc., 2013
   

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2. Shannon Smith
   Web Developer
   Café Noir Design
   www.cafenoirdesign.com
   @cafenoirdesign
   

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3. O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies
   In the small orb of one particular tear.
   -William Shakespeare
   

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4. What We’ll Cover
   1. Microcontent
   2. Metadata
   3. Structured Data
   

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5. Does It Really Matter?
   

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6. “Yes.”
   -Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter
   

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7. Microcontent
   

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8. What Is Microcontent?
   

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9. What Is Microcontent?
   Small Bits of Content
   

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10. What Is Microcontent?
    “Microcontent should be an ultra-short abstract of its
    associated macrocontent.”
    - Jakob Nielsen
    

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11. What Is Microcontent?
    “Today, microcontent is being used as a more general term
    indicating content that conveys one primary idea or
    concept, is accessible through a single definitive URL or
    permalink, and is appropriately written and formatted for
    presentation in email clients, web browsers, or on handheld
    devices as needed.”
    - Anil Dash
    

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12. What Is Microcontent?
    Very small, basic units of digital content or media
    “that can be consumed in unbundled microchunks . . .
    and aggregated and reconstructed in hyperefficient
    ways”.
    - Umair Haque
    

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13. What Does Microcontent Look Like?
    

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14. Incoming vs Outgoing
    Microcontent
    

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15. Who Is Using Microcontent?
    1. Search Engines
    2. Humans
    3. Social Networks
    

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16. Who Is Using Microcontent?
    Search Engines
    Microcontent Defines the Content
    

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17. Who Is Using Microcontent?
    Humans
    Microcontent Is Part of the Content
    

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18. Who Is Using Microcontent?
    Social Networks
    Microcontent Is the Content
    

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19. How Can You Leverage Up?
    Create microcontent that is...
    • bite-size
    • shareable
    • context-independent
    • audience-specific
    

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20. Metadata
    

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21. What Is Metadata?
    

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22. What Is Metadata?
    Data About Data
    

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23. What Is Metadata?
    Meta Elements
    Meta Tags
    

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24. What Is Metadata?
    Tags which contain content that search engines show
    to humans.
    

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25. What Does Metadata Look Like?
    

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26. What Does Metadata Look Like?
    

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27. Who Is Using Metadata?
    Humans
    

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28. An SEO copywriter walks into a bar,
    grill, pub, public house, Irish,
    bartender, drinks, beer, wine,
    liquor...
    

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29. How Can You Leverage Up?
    Add metadata that is...
    1. natural
    2. human-centric
    3. unique
    

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30. Structured Data
    

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31. What Is Structured Data?
    

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32. What Is Structured Data?
    Data with Meaning
    

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33. What Is Structured Data?
    “I have a dream for the Web [in which computers]
    become capable of analyzing all the data on the
    Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and
    computers. A "Semantic Web", which makes this possible, has yet to
    emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade,
    bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking
    to machines. The "intelligent agents" people have touted for ages will
    finally materialize.”
    Tim Berners-Lee
    

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34. What Is Structured Data?
    Context for Machines
    

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35. A Brief History of Structured Data
    1995 Dublin Core
    2004 RDFa
    2006 Microformats (μF)
    2009 Microdata (part of HTML5)
    2011 Schema.org (Bing, Google and Yahoo!)
    2012 Open Graph protocol (Facebook)
    2012 Twitter Cards
    

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36. What Is Microdata?
    By adding additional tags to the HTML of your web pages—
    tags that say, "Hey search engine, this information describes this
    specific movie, or place, or person, or video"—you can help
    search engines and other applications better
    understand your content and display it in a useful,
    relevant way.
    Microdata is a set of tags, introduced with HTML5, that
    allows you to do this..
    -Schema.org
    

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37. What Is Microdata?
    If Google understands the content on your pages, we can create
    rich snippets—detailed information intended to help
    users with specific queries.
    -Google
    

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38. What Does Structured Data
    Look Like?
    

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39. What Does Structured Data
    Look Like?
    

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40. What Does Structured Data
    Look Like?
    

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41. Who Is Using Structured Data?
    1.Search Engines
    2.Social Networks
    

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42. Who Is Using Structured Data?
    Facebook
    vs.
    

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43. Who Is Using Structured Data?
    Twitter
    

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44. Who Is Using Structured Data?
    Google Authorship
    

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45. Who Is Using Structured Data?
    Google Search
    

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46. Who Is Using Structured Data?
    Specialized Search
    

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47. Who Is Using Structured Data?
    Everyone.
    LinkedIn flickr Google+ Lego
    Last.fm Google Maps Target
    BestBuy TripAdvisor Twitter
    Zappos Wikipedia Amazon
    Apple store Anthropologie
    Office Depot Costco Netflix
    Google Search Toys ‘R Us NYT
    

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48. How Can You Leverage Up?
    Add structured data that is...
    • standards-compliant
    • semantic
    • tested
    •useful
    

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49. Shannon Smith
    Web Developer
    Café Noir Design
    Get the slides & worksheet:
    http://chroni.ca
    www.cafenoirdesign.com
    @cafenoirdesign
    

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