Give Your DITA wings with taxonomy & modern web design Joe Pairman
What do we all want?
What do we all want? ~ Free beer
What do we all want? ~ Free beer ~ We want our content to be effective
What do we all want? ~ Free beer ~ We want our content to be effective ~ for which it needs to be found and viewed
Where will our content be found?
Where will our content be found? ~ On the web
Where will our content be found? ~ On the web ~ Via a search engine
Where will our content be found? ~ On the web ~ Via a search engine ~ One client: 80% of pageviews come from organic search
Where will our content be found? ~ On the web ~ Via a search engine ~ One client: 80% of pageviews come from organic search ~ From experience, this is very typical
Agenda ~ What are Google and other search engines looking for? ~ How does DITA meet those needs (and of course, those of users!) ~ What is DITA missing that taxonomy can bring? ~ What further markup help do search engines need (Schema.org)? ~ How do we produce that markup scalably?
What kind of pages do Google / other search engines rank highly? ~ Highly designed sites?
What kind of pages do Google / other search engines rank highly? ~ Highly designed sites? ~ Actually, mobile-friendly sites
What kind of pages do Google / other search engines rank highly? ~ Highly designed sites? ~ Actually, mobile-friendly sites ~ Fast-loading sites
What kind of pages do Google / other search engines rank highly? ~ Highly designed sites? ~ Actually, mobile-friendly sites ~ Fast-loading sites ~ Alternative pages with extremely simple HTML
If fancy visual design isn t important, what is?
If fancy visual design isn t important, what is? ~ Content itself, for a start
What kind of content gets ranked highly? (and found) ~ Purposeful content ~ Content that matches users intent ~ Specifically, one of four intent types: I want to know I want to go I want to do I want to buy
What kind of content gets ranked highly? (and found) ~ Purposeful content ~ Content that matches users intent ~ Specifically, one of four intent types: I want to know I want to go I want to do I want to buy ~ Two of these probably match what our content is aiming at
DITA to know; DITA to do Concept ~ Concepts provide background that helps readers understand essential information about a product, a task, a process, or any other conceptual or descriptive information. DITA 1.3 spec ~ Title and shortdesc are the narrow end of the pyramid Task ~ A task information type answers the "How do I?" question by providing precise step-by-step instructions detailing the requirements that must be fulfilled, the actions that must be performed, and the order in which the actions must be performed. DITA 1.3 spec
How do simple search results use DITA structures? ~ Title (main topic title + possibly the site name) ~ Snippet (often 1 st 170 chars of your shortdesc, transformed to HTML meta description)
Shortdesc is a very important chunk of info ~ SERP link previews tend to use it ~ It may improve ranking in the first place! ~ For site search, link previews are just as useful Apparently no shortdescs or equivalent Shortdescs (as meta description & in page content)
Wellstructured procedural steps are important for How do I do intent
Where goal-oriented DITA needs help ~ Each topic focuses on a goal ~ But how do we analyse and keep track of all user goals? ~ Enter taxonomy
Terminology: taxonomy ~ A way to keep track of things that are important to your organization ~ A way to keep track of names for those things ~ A way to indicate some broad relationships between those things
What does a taxonomy look like?
Taskonomy: simplifying by focusing on user tasks
Taskonomy*: simplifying by focusing on user tasks *Not a made-up word:
Taskonomy: simplifying by focusing on user tasks Top-level tasks: ~ Bridge roles, tools, and environments ~ May correspond to usage lifecycle
Insight deep in the hierarchy Users needed to see content related to their task
Insight deep in the hierarchy Users needed to see content related to their task detailed procedures but also overviews/ scenarios
Insight deep in the hierarchy Users needed to see content related to their task detailed procedures but also overviews/ scenarios
Insight deep in the hierarchy Users needed to see content related to their task detailed procedures but also overviews/ scenarios
Re-architecting content: a user goal or session per page / URL
Re-architecting content: a user goal or session per page / URL ~ Good for users ~ Good for Google ~ Good for site search/browsing
Focused pages reduce duplication & effort ~ From a comprehensive user guide per product
Focused pages reduce duplication & effort ~ From a comprehensive user guide per product ~ To a single instance of each task, reducing product-specific instructions to installs, etc.
Other benefits of taskonomy
Top-level tasks used to unify the content
Logic for auto related links ~ More relevant than fully automated related links Human-constructed thesaurus Human input in tagging ~ Far less creation & maintenance effort than manual links
The small matter of publishing to the web ~ Two approaches: dedicated DITA portal / publish directly to Web CMS ~ Pros and cons for both ~ Web CMS typically gives consistent branding / SEO, and ability to show DITA next to related marcomms content ~ But DIY is very expensive
AEM XML documentation add-on solves many problems
Search engines do face challenges Getting users to the right page, where there s lots of content on similar subject matter Finding useful snippets to show relevancy, where the page isn t well introduced, or where the introduction uses unfamiliar language Even finding relevant content in the first place, with specialized subject matter or different terms
DITA metadata + inline taxonomy can help search engines too Google s guide on structured data (extra metadata to help search engines) ~ Helps Google find relevant results (good if yours are relevant!) ~ Can enable various richer search results
Google search features
Schema.org ~ Initiative started by Bing, Google, Yahoo and later Yandex ~ to create and support a common set of schemas for structured data markup on web pages. With Schema.org, webmasters and developers can learn about structured data and improve how their sites appear in search results ~ It s rather large now
Schema.org ~ Initiative started by Bing, Google, Yahoo and later Yandex ~ to create and support a common set of schemas for structured data markup on web pages. With schema.org, webmasters and developers can learn about structured data and improve how their sites appear in search results ~ It s rather large now
Possible metadata for offer (price, etc.)
How to generate this markup? ~ Tools such as Schema App can help with manual entry / relationships, etc. ~ They can also integrate with e- commerce platforms such as Shopify ~ But for granular content, it s trickier
How about for more granular content?
In DITA we already classify chunks of content
In DITA we already classify chunks of content
In DITA we already classify chunks of content
Generating Schema.org markup automatically from DITA source
Author in AEM (or any integrated editor)
Add some simple metadata
Generate output from the map as normal
Push content to AEM publishing instance
Push content to AEM publishing instance
Published content
Published content
DITA task (specialized) > Recipe entity
Data elements > totaltime and recipeyield
List item in ingredients section > recipeingredient
Step in (specialized) task > recipeinstructions
What does Google make of this metadata?
Rich snippet: desktop search
Rich snippet: desktop search
Rich snippet: desktop search
Recipe carousel: mobile search
Recipe label: mobile image search
Summary ~ Use DITA to really shape your information to its purpose Don t just chop books up into DITA-shape objects! ~ Use taxonomy, maybe taskonomy, to define, explore, and manage user tasks ~ Tag your content with taxonomy concepts for internal and external findability ~ Publish your content to the web. (Remember that 80%!) ~ Consider Schema.org markup talk to me!
Questions / suggestions? ~ joepairman@mekon.com ~ @joepairman