Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Online Marketing Consultant

The other day, I read a great article about Microformats and the hCard. Although Microformats are not regulated by the WC3, it’s still a great middle ground to solve a number of location based problems on the web. Here’s some more info about microformats and their strengths and weaknesses:

• hCard on Wikipedia
• Microformats cheat sheet
• Practical Microformats with hCard

Here’s a quick overview, if you are unfamiliar with hCards. An hCard, similar to a vCard, uses XHTML to allow search engines and other bots to decipher between a random text passage on a website and an address, phone number, website, etc. by simply adding a few extra attributes to a websites XHTML.

I didn’t think much of it at first, but then started to look back at previous pages that I’ve coded and this is really a powerful technology. Since addresses appear all over the web without any unifying structure, this works to tie them all together with one consistent syntax. By using a consistent syntax, tools such as Google Maps’ API can pick up on these things much easier, while still providing useful markup that humans can read and understand easily.

Along with Google Maps, the article points out, Yahoo maps might start using the hCard format soon, but haven’t given any definitive time line.

So why should you start using the hCard format? Like most SEO best practices - for the limited amount of time needed to make the necessary changes and the possibility of future adaptation and acceptance, it can’t hurt.

To make your own hCard today, use the hCard creator. Make sure to note the warnings on the page as well.