How and why you should optimize DITA-based content for search engine optimization

1. DITA + SEO:
How and why you should optimize
DITA-based content for search
engine optimization
Keith Schengili-Roberts
DITA Specialist, IXIASOFT

2. Agenda
•Introduction
•Scope of this Presentation
•SEO and DITA
•What Does Google Look At?
•Writing Content for Your Users
•Q/A

3. Who’s This Guy?
Keith Schengili-Roberts,
IXIASOFT DITA Specialist
What I do:
• DITA evangelist
• Liaison with OASIS; on DITA
Adoption and Technical Committees
• Industry researcher
• Lecturer on Information Architecture,
University of Toronto
• 10+ Years of DITA XML experience

4. Also Known As “DITAWriter”
• Industry blog started +5
years ago
• Just over 200,000 hits
• Regularly updated info on:
 DITA Conferences
 DITA Books
 Companies Using DITA
 DITA CMSes
 DITA Editors
 Other DITA Tools
 DITA Consulting Firms
• News/views on DITA use
• Features interviews with
those making a difference
in the world of DITA

5. Scope of this Presentation
• HTML-based output from DITA content
• Mechanisms available in DITA to aid with SEO
• Information on what Google is looking for when it
ranks content
• Writing DITA content with better SEO in mind
• Along the way I may burst a few bubbles when it
comes to what techniques do and do not matter

6. Q: WHERE’S THE BEST PLACE
TO HIDE A DEAD BODY?
A: The second page of Google

7. Search Engine Optimization is Magic!
• No, it really isn’t
• There are agencies that
can help with SEO, but
the information is out
there and available
• Recommend Google
Webmasters as a start:
www.google.com/webmasters/

8. How Search Engines Work
• Three key phases:
1. Your content is “crawled”
by a search engine
spider; finds new/changed
info and retrieves it
2. Search engine analyses
and indexes your
website’s content
3. A user submits a query to
a search engine,
providing a list of possible
links

9. How DITA Content is Produced for the Web
1. DITA content is crafted by
writers
2. Content is transformed from
DITA via XSL (typically through
the DITA Open Toolkit) to
XHTML
3. This transformed content is then
placed on the Web
There are steps at each of these
stages that can help improve SEO

10. Serving DITA Content on a Web Server
• Content can be served on
platforms optimized for DITA;
examples include:
 Congility DITAweb
 Antidot FluidTopics
 Zoomin Docs
• These DITA-specific web
platforms come with tools
designed to help your
customers find your content
once they are at your
website

11. Acrolinx Scorecard and SEO
• Acrolinx includes an SEO
rating in their “Scorecard
Summary”
• Works by having user
enter keywords, then the
plug-in analyzes the
related keyword usage in
the document
• Full report advises on
keyword usage in title,
short description,
document body, meta
description, etc.

12. Do You Want to Even Make Your Docs Visible?
• Some companies opt not to have their
documentation “spider-able”:
 Company wants search engines to focus
exclusively on marketing content
 When there’s a need to point to a
company-sponsored search engine
specifically for docs
• In your webpages, add the following to
each header:
 All search engines:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex"/>
 Google only:
<meta name="googlebot" content="noindex"/>
• Or, add a robots.txt file to your webserver that
says the following:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /tech-docs/

13. Food for (Web) Spiders: sitemap.xml
• You can aid the search engine crawlers
coming to your documentation by
creating a sitemap.xml file for that
describes the following:
 Parent URL for Website content
 URL of specific page
 Date that webpage was last updated
(optional)
 How frequently the page is likely to change
(optional)
 Priority of a given page in comparison to other
pages on the website (optional)

14. Sample sitemap.xml File
• Sample sitemap.xml for
DITAWriter website
• “Priority” value ranges
from 0.0 to 1.0, with
default set to 0.5
 use this to increase
likelihood of your most
important pages being
present in a search index
• Upload your sitemap
file to peer directory/
“starting point”

15. DITA and Metadata
• DITA can be incorporated at
both the map and topic
levels
 Bookmaps use the bookmeta
and topicmeta elements as
containers
 Topics incorporate metadata
within the prolog
• This content along is then
expressed at output
primarily as Dublin Core
metadata
Bookmap
Topic

16. What is Dublin Core?
• Dublin Core is a set of
metadata designed to
describe web content,
related to semantic web
initiative
• Originating in 1995, since
mid 2000s DCMI have
worked with W3C on
Semantic Web efforts
• DITA-OT uses a subset of
Simple Dublin Core v1.1
when outputting to XHTML

17. DITA, DITA-OT and Dublin Core
DITA Element(s) Dublin Core Equivalent
author (topic), authorinformation (map) Creator
category Coverage
[output type: XHTML] Format
critdates Date
[id value associated with topic type] Identifier
publisher (topic), publisherinformation
(map)
Publisher
copyright Rights
source Source
keyword Subject
title Title
[topic type] Type

18. DITA to Dublin Core
DITA topic
Equivalent XHTML output

19. Google and Dublin Core
• While Dublin Core is long-
established, and the DITA-
OT supports it, Google does
not appear to do much with
this content
• It can be advantageous from
a content management
perspective
 For example, info on when a
topic is created and by whom
may be useful to know
 Local webserver may be able
to filter content on DC values
+
=

20. What About Keywords and Google?
• Forget it, no point (at least from an SEO perspective)
DITA topic
Equivalent XHTML output

21. SO WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO
GOOGLE?
A: The second page of Google

22. Making <title> Count
• Avoid boilerplate titles (i.e. “Introduction”); make
them descriptive (i.e. “What You Need to Know
About the Vebulon 5”)
• Make them concise; Google truncates long titles
that are just over 70-75 characters long
• Don’t overload them with keywords (i.e. “All About
the Vebulon 5 – Vebulon Five, Fifth Vebulon,
vebulon five, 5th vebulon, vebulon the fifth, Acme
Corporation’s Vebulon Five”)

23. So What Else Does Google Look At?
• Short Descriptions! Displayed immediately after title:
DITA
XHTML
Google
Search

24. Short Descriptions and Click-throughs
• While short descriptions are not factored in search
engine rankings, user behaviours are
• Google measures click-through rates (CTR)
• A well-written, descriptive short description
ensures more click-throughs

25. Links and Relationship Tables
• One metric thought to influence webpage rankings
are the number of links to a page
• More weight is applied from external URLs
pointing to a webpage than internal ones, but
internal hierarchy counts as well
• Adding relationship tables is not only good DITA
practice, but may also enhance SEO too!

26. Relationship Tables = Double the Output
• Relationship tables
results in Dublin
Core metadata as
well as links
DITA XHTML Header
XHTML
Body

27. Writing Effective Short Descriptions for SEO
• A well-written short description tells the would-be reader
why it is worth clicking on
 Task: tell users what they can accomplish
 Concept: tell users about what you are describing and why
they should care
 Reference: tell users what the referenced item does or what
it can be used for
 Troubleshooting: describe the symptoms of a problem a user
may encounter and let them know that this topic can help
• While shortdesc best practices suggests two sentences,
Google truncates search results at ~156 characters
 Need to put most important content first!

28. Schema.org and SEO
• Sponsored by Google, Bing, Yandex and Yahoo!
to “create and support a common set of schemas
for structured data markup on web pages.”
• Its vocabulary is designed for marking up content
with semantic descriptions aimed at web spiders
• Uses Microdata, RDFa, or JSON-LD formats
Sample Schema.org Code Rendered in RDFa

29. • Current Schema.org definitions are not focused on
technical documentation, mainly on products
 Most common usage is for “Rich Snippets”, describing
info about a product
• There are tools that can help combine RDFa with
XHTML output from DITA
 But currently no RDFa/Schema.org implementation
DITA and Schema.org?

30. CRAFTING KILLER SEO CONTENT
WRITING FOR YOUR USERS
A: The second page of Google

31. A Story…
Kenmore Model 80
Clothes Washer
One day it stopped in the
middle of a wash, and
wouldn’t drain…

32. So What to Do?

33. So What About the Clothes Washer Manual?
• Continued search to see if
manual turned up; it didn’t
• Did a different search
specifically for the manual, then
looked for info on my problem
• Problem was there, correct
solution (in this case) was not

34. Writing to Engage with Your Audience
• Previous example underscores how important it is
to anticipate users’ needs
 If the information is improperly targeted, is not well-
described or is missing, users will not find it
• Know your users!
 Why they have come to your content?
 What are they seeking to accomplish?
• This is why having effective personas + scenarios
to help guide your technical writers is a priority

35. How DITA Can Help Shape the Dialogue
• DITA’s topic types set the stage for how technical
writers communicate with their audience
 Concept: what is this thing and what is it for?
 Reference: what are the correct settings?
 Task: how do I accomplish this procedure?
 Troubleshooting: how do I fix this problem I am having?

36. Search Engine Technology is Changing
• It used to be that anyone who knew basics of
Boolean searches (AND, NOT, OR) could expect
to get better search results
• Google has invested significantly in natural
language speech recognition (Google Now)

37. What To Know About Voice Query Usage
• While youngest demographic uses voice queries
the most, rates are also high with adult
demographics
 Voice query usage is growing rapidly
• Voice query length longer, typically phrased as a
question
 Text queries average 2-3 words, voice 3-5 words
• Voice queries tend to be goal-directed
 “Grocery stores near me”
 “How do I fix my clothes washer?”

38. Implication of Voice Queries for Tech Docs
• Further emphasizes focus on needs of the user
 Think about why they have come to read your docs
 What are likely scenarios that have led them to your
docs?
 What questions will they ask, and how can you
answer them?
 Consider writing titles or short descriptions as possible answers
to a query
 If you haven’t already adopted DITA 1.3 troubleshooting topic
type, consider doing so

39. DITA + SEO: Summing Up
• Optimize content for search engines and users
• Consider adding sitemap.xml to help spiders find and
index your content
• Understand that Dublin Core is present in DITA-OT
• Descriptive, concise titles!
• Effective short descriptions can increase CTR
• Relationship tables may also help
• Keep an eye for future developments from
Schema.org
• Do not think in terms of SEO “tricks”; best thing you
can do is to know your audience and write for them

40. Further Reading
• Google Webmasters: google.com/webmasters/
 Meta tags that Google understands:
support.google.com/webmasters/answer/79812?hl=en
• Sitemaps.org: sitemaps.org/
• Dublin Core Metadata Initiative: dublincore.org/
• SEO Pressor Connect Blog: seopressor.com/blog/
• Moz Blog: moz.com/blog
• OASIS Feature article on short descriptions (PDF):
oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/57803/

41. QA
• Blog: www.ixiasoft.com/en/news-and-
events/blog
• Twitter: @IXIASOFT (and @KeithIXIASOFT)
• IXIASOFT DITA CMS Users LinkedIn group:
www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3820030
• Member of OASIS DITA Technical Committee