Questions about SEO and fonts

Post here questions and problems related to editing and publishing DITA content.
alison
Posts: 15
Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2021 6:05 am

Questions about SEO and fonts

Post by alison »

Hi there,
I have two questions to ask:
1. How can I define the font of the article in the CSS file when I export the article to PDF?
2. When I export articles as webhelp, is it possible to add SEO to each topic so that users can access this topic by searching it on the internet?
julien_lacour
Posts: 481
Joined: Wed Oct 16, 2019 3:47 pm

Re: Questions about SEO and fonts

Post by julien_lacour »

Hi,

Here are the answers to your question:
  1. You can follow this topic to Set Fonts in Titles and Content
    This works for the majority of fonts:
    • You can place the font files in the same folder as your CSS and use a @font-face definition to reference them.
    • You can use web fonts (for example, Google Fonts), and import the CSS snippet into your CSS.
    • You can use system fonts.
  2. What kind of modification do you want to made in WebHelp to optimize the search? We can give you hints maybe. Can you give an example of a scenario of what you are trying to achieve?
Regards,
Julien
alison
Posts: 15
Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2021 6:05 am

Re: Questions about SEO and fonts

Post by alison »

hi,
For example, if I publish a webhelp page, I need to define the keywords of the page. The following format can be used as a reference:
<meta name='keywords' content="XXXX">
Then when I search for the keyword XXXX in Google, it is possible to search out this page.
chrispitude
Posts: 907
Joined: Thu May 02, 2019 2:32 pm

Re: Questions about SEO and fonts

Post by chrispitude »

Hi Alison,

If you have <keyword> metadata in your DITA topic:

Code: Select all

<topic id="topic">
    <title>My Topic</title>
    <prolog>
        <metadata>
            <keywords>
                <keyword>foo</keyword>
                <keyword>bar</keyword>
            </keywords>
        </metadata>
    </prolog>
    <body>
        <p>This is some text.</p>
    </body>
</topic>
then the WebHelp output contains HTML metadata elements accordingly:

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
...
    <meta name="keywords" content="foo, bar"/>
...
  </head>
I did a quick search, and it seems that Google's public web search might not consider these <meta> metadata keywords, to avoid being influenced by non-content values to cheat on search rankings.
alison
Posts: 15
Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2021 6:05 am

Re: Questions about SEO and fonts

Post by alison »

Hi,
Thank you for the reply.
So when I'm done with the content of the topic in author mode,
image.png
image.png (34.58 KiB) Viewed 2613 times
Then enter the text mode to add <keyword> metadata as shown in the picture below:
image.png
image.png (177.25 KiB) Viewed 2613 times
Is this correct?
chrispitude
Posts: 907
Joined: Thu May 02, 2019 2:32 pm

Re: Questions about SEO and fonts

Post by chrispitude »

Hi Alison,

You can more easily add metadata from the Authoring view by selecting Full Tags from the Tags Display dropdown, as described here:

Editing Documents > Editing XML Documents > Editing XML Documents in Author Mode > Displaying the Markup

The editor will help guide you with only the tags that are valid at that location. Put your cursor before the <body>, then press Enter and insert a <prolog>, then again for the next element down, and so on.

Just keep in mind that while WebHelp's search will consider these keywords, Google's public web page search will not consider them - and this is by their choice.
alison
Posts: 15
Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2021 6:05 am

Re: Questions about SEO and fonts

Post by alison »

Hi,
Thanks for the reply.
According to my understanding, although the search engine's search mechanism depends on various factors, keywords do have a positive effect, meaning that they can tell the search engine about your content, and increase the priority in the engine's search mechanism.
Therefore, it is usually recommended to add keywords to the article, right?
chrispitude
Posts: 907
Joined: Thu May 02, 2019 2:32 pm

Re: Questions about SEO and fonts

Post by chrispitude »

Hi Alison,

I don't know how Google's search ranking algorithms handle HTML metadata keywords, so I cannot help you with that question. Sorry. :(
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