give your dita wings with taxonomy & modern web design · ~ use taxonomy, maybe taskonomy, to...

Give Your DITA wingswith 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 1st ≈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 shortdescsor equivalent

Shortdescs (as meta description & in page content)

Well-structured 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 hierarchyUsers needed to see content related to their task…

Insight deep in the hierarchyUsers needed to see content related to their task…

…detailed procedures but also overviews/ scenarios

Insight deep in the hierarchyUsers needed to see content related to their task…

…detailed procedures but also overviews/ scenarios

Insight deep in the hierarchyUsers 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-onsolves many problems

Search engines do face challengesGetting 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

~ Helps Google find relevant results (good if yours are relevant!)

~ Can enable various richer search results…

Google’s guide on structured data (extra metadata to help search engines)

DITA metadata + inline taxonomy can help search engines too

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