Redefining Microcontent for Search Engine Optimization
In 1998, Jakob Nielsen defined Microcontent as pearls of clarity: you get 40-60 characters to explain your macrocontent. Nielsen was referring to subject lines, online headlines, link anchor text, etc. We (my team and I) use the term microcontent differently. 80 characters are just way too few to be useful for search engine optimization. Instead, we might use 200 characters. And we don’t speak in terms of characters but rather in terms of words, sentences, and (bullet) points.
Unless you’re creating copy for mobile devices, I don’t think microcontent should constitute the main body text for a page. Microcontent is a small paragraph, a sentence, or an intuitively communicating phrase, expression, or word. Microcontent conveys a complete point, but does not have to be very short.
You can take classes in microcontent (we are not affiliated with PRSA), and you can Twitter in microcontent (okay, you must twitter in microcontent).
We swim in an ocean of microcontent and never even realize it.
Microcontent encapsulates our thoughts
We are learning to write in elevator pitches and meta descriptions. We may lose the ability to engage in in-depth research.
Microcontent helps organize our information
In a world where scannable text is in demand, microcontent forces us to make content scannable. But each micropoint on a page should ideally complement the other micropoints.
Microcontent diversifies our expression
Any RSS or XML feed conveys a stream of microcontent to some sort of client. A news headline feed, for example, helps us explore a wide range of topics and events quickly.
Microcontent can be as complex as this point
We can emphasize sub-points within blocks of microcontent that themselves explain larger points. But our communication and emphasis, while being concise, still need to be coherent and complete.
Nesting microcontent illustrates just how flexible it really can be:
- Nested microcontent includes multiple topics
- Nested microcontent is succinct
- Nested microcontent is elegant
You can use microcontent to expand the scope of your writing without meandering through an endless series of points (the way many of you complain I often do). Microcontent can populate your margins, dress up your page footers, make your mastheads more robust, or float in the midst of your body copy to draw reader attention to specific points.
You can also embed microcontent in tabular structures so that it linearizes well. For example, if you’re presenting a grid of options, each option can be explained in 1-2 sentences that are each allocated their own cell. Many sites that provide multiple downloads use this structure. Web directories use a similar, if more loose structure.
In fact, search engines use very complex microcontent for their listings. There is technically no practical limit to how much microcontent you can include on a page. Microcontent is the foundation of Web copy for ecommerce, news, and search.
There is no reason why you cannot experiment with microcontent in other formats, going well beyond Jakob Nielsen’s original definitions. With microcontent you have the power to reshape a page’s relevance so that it is robust, diverse, and flexible enough to rank for many expressions at one time.
www.seo-theory.com
published @ October 8, 2008