Good news everyone: quality content is not only about content you can see, it is also about content hidden to human eyes. In a previous post, I emphasised on importance of hidden content. Today, I will explain in details what hidden content is and how it can be optimised to maximise chances of having your pages correctly seen by any kind of reader (i.e. human, robot, application…).

Where is hidden content?

• Often overwhelmed, the URL can tell a lot about your content and should then be as meaningful as possible. Not to mention URL is also used in major search engines algorithm when determining what a website is about.

• Page title (html tag title) is what will appear in Google and other search tools when your site get listed. So make sure your title includes 1) the name of your website, 2) an explicit title of the page.

• Page description (html meta tag ‘description’ ) is what search engines will show under your website title on result page. That’s why it has to say briefly (no more than 250 characters) what the page is about. Though less important, other meta tags are worth considering.

• Regarding keywords, meta tag is not that important anymore. If you’re a blogger, keywords (also known as ‘tags’) are extremely important to ensure you page is correctly referenced in various social networking sites. They are also a good functionality to offer to your readers when displayed on your site as a tag cloud. So make sure you describe thoroughly the topic of your page, but be careful not to provide too much information. If you blog about sport cars, it is useless to add ’sport’ and ‘cars’ as keyword in each of your posts.

• Anyone concerned by accessibility know how important is image ‘alt‘ attribute. But what is the point of typing lines such as ‘image’ or to repeat what is said in the caption? What should show in the ‘alt’ attribute is a proper description of the image, to allow reader who don’t see it to get an accurate savour of the atmosphere of the website.

• As for ‘alt’ for images, link ‘title‘ should be really a description of the page to which it links. For instance ‘link to an external website’ is poor, ‘University of Berkeley undergraduate programmes 2008′ is good. On top of that each link ‘title’ needs to be unique to allow ones using screen readers to discriminate between each one.

• A table ‘summary‘ aims to tell what the table is about. It is good for accessibility, as most of its friends from Hidden Content Club. But it is also a good opportunity to make sure you actually needed a table. If you come up with a summary such as ‘annual income for Europe profit units’ you’re fine. But if your summary looks like ‘main content of my new post’, you should go back to your favorite web page editor.

How to take care of it?

Depending on your website management tools, pieces of hidden content are more or less automatically generated. For instance, title is taken from your post title in most blog authoring tools. There may be a specific field for description in user interface. Regarding image ‘alt’, link ‘title’ and table ’summary’, if your text editor is good it will include these fields in dialog boxes. Bear in mind that name of these fields may change from one tool to another.

URL may be a bit tricky to deal with. Lot of content management systems will generate non meaningful URL including numbers and special characters. The good thing is that they often come with a solution to set up user friendly URLs. When choosing you URL rewriting rules, make sure it includes words from the actual title of your post.

Anyway, when previewing a page to publish, have a close look at the source code to check this now famous hidden content is in order ⁽¹⁾. All this may seem a lot to had to average website management burden. The key point is to understand that hidden content should be part of the main content generation. Once you get used to it you will naturally include it in your pre-publication quality check.

Believe me and forget about default meta or meaningless ‘alt’ attributes. Taking care of hidden content is not only a basic accessibility requirement. It is a way to ensure everyone can access an optimised version of your content. It is good for your readers comfort and for your reputation, so don’t skip it.

(1): That is to say don’t follow the example of this blog. Description is currently not available but should be back soon.

Editing index.html, uploading face.jpg, amending style.css, deleting oldies.html… Sounds like a list of simple tasks every one familiar with computers could handle. But managing a website is more than that. It is about doing it well and fast, while keeping the web server a clean ecosystem to work in. Not to mention making sure information accuracy is preserved. Here are 4 rules that should always guide your actions, disciple: organise, name, back-up and clean.

1 - Organise folders

You should be able to find any file easily. If you need to google a page to find it, it may mean there is a problem in your folders hierarchy. First of all, it is easier if folder organisation reflects website structure. Create sub folders to organise files by types or by date. It is a good idea to follow the convention of having a folder to store images (it should be named ‘images’) and one for documents (’docs’).

2 - Set up a naming convention

At a folder level, nothing is worse than facing a list of indiscernible files. By using a naming convention, you make sure your files are showing the way you want. Do you want them organised by date or by name? Do you need the name to carry information about file size or the part of the site it will be used in? Give it a gook thought before you set up your folder, it worth it.

3 - Make nothing irreversible

Never assume a minor change is straight forward enough to allow you to go without a back up. Except when fixing typos, you should always keep a copy of a document before starting amending it. Then again, use your naming convention (see previous rule) so every back-up version will be named on the same model. Some usual choices are ‘file-name-old’ or ‘file-name.bak’.

4 - Clean as you go

Don’t leave anything out of date or inaccurate live. Mainly because it could be indexed by your website search engine, and users could potentially access to it via the search facility. But you also want to prevent anyone from loosing time editing the old version of a page. And the less oldies you keep on your server, the more disk space you save for good fresh content.

To sum it up, make sure your website folders are clean and organised in such a way that anyone could take up your position any day. This way you will spare precious time in your daily tasks. Is anyone aware of other rules I may have not mentioned in this post?