Accessibility and SEO updates

[markwyner]

There are a couple of structural things I’d love to see updated in the Write.as templates:

1. Meta language tags. Either a full meta tag or a lang attribute on the HTML tag. If the idea is be flexible for any language, perhaps you could ask for a language in account settings to declare the value.
2. Replace the h1 tag that’s used for the blog title with another tag (except on the main screen, where it’s appropriate). The h1 should be reserved for the content titles to improve accessibility and SEO. Both rely on that tag to introduce a page’s content. On a post, the title is far more important as a descriptor than the blog name.

Thanks for considering these.

[nigel]

mmm both points would be very useful.

[justinf]

I support this. See this post for more details.

Header Tags used incorrectly by Write.as

Currently, the site title is using an H1 tag, and this tag appears on every page, including individual blog post pages. Meanwhile, the titles of blog posts themselves are marked with H2 tags. While this structure might seem logical at first glance, it’s not in line with best practices for HTML semantics and SEO. Why This is an Issue: Each Page Should Have One H1 Tag: According to web development best practices, each page should have a single H1 tag that represents the main content of that spec…

[markwyner]

There’s a little “vote” button at the top. It’s not obvious. But click it to see how cool it is.

[justinf]

Yup, voted!

[veyne]

Voted too!

[matt]

Thanks for suggesting these updates! As mentioned in @justinf’s thread, we can definitely address the h1 issue – there’s just a blocker we need to address, mentioned here:

Header Tags used incorrectly by Write.as

Thanks for this in-depth explanation, @justinf! It’s an enormous help, and I think we can definitely address it. The only real blocker here is going to be with custom designs. Since this changes the structure of the page, it can potentially break any custom CSS people are using. For a while now, I’ve wanted to revamp the structure (including changes like this), and give people a chance to manually switch to this “V2” layout. I’ve created a task here, so we can track development and be sure to …

As for the meta language tags, you should see those on individual posts, which each have their own language value.

But we definitely need a default for the blog landing page, too. That was previously suggested in this feature request: Add default blog language. I’ve started working on this, but it’s a little tricky especially when people write in multiple languages on the same blog. I can take another look at that soon.

[markwyner]

Yay! Not gonna lie. I’m a little giddy to see my feature referenced in your task tracker. Write.as was a great move for me. I’m super happy to be here. Thanks for caring about us, @matt.