If you have any interest in SEO at all (and you probably do, because you’re sitting there reading my blog) then you’ve likely been keeping your eye (thumb, toe, butt, face, mouth…everything) on the buzz circling HTML5. Specifically, a lot of us are really curious about how it’s going to affect search engine optimization as we know it.
There’s some hashing going on through twitter back and forth about the subject as new content comes up. More than a few people are grumbling at the lack of support from some search engines – I believe Internet Explorer currently has their arms crossed in a frump and will have issues with the new tags. Are we shocked? Not really.
We love Microsoft right?
Not really.
Either way, W3C is publishing regular drafts that contain the latest HTML5 standards, and despite it catching on and some compatability issues it’s likely to gain speed fast.
“shut up and tell us about the SEO, Joerg!”
Ok fine.
HTML5 appears to come across in an XML-style of information presentation. This will certainly help to make sites and their content a lot more search engine friendly. (Insert sigh of relief)
The new header tag is running as the semantic equivalent of H1 and will/could/should/hopefully contain long structured texts. The header permits addition of content such as the H elements (1,2,3) paragraphs, copyrights, version, and (say it with me) hard coded-links. It’s ok, you can say “woohoo”. I did.
<body>
<header>
<h1><a href=”http://www.disney.com/blog”>Mickey Mouse Rules</a></h1>
</header>
If you’re running a content management system, likely for a news site, ezine, blog etc then you’ll really enjoy the “article” element. This sectional element allows for the simplified categorization of content. Hopefully, this will reduce the divs that some sites seem to be collecting like their Pokémon and will produce a cleaner display of information with a lighter code.
<article>
<h2><a href=
"/blog/birding/2007/04/23/but-does-it-count-for-your-life-list/">
But does it count for your life list?</a></h2>
<p>Seems you can now go <a
href="http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/
2007/04/cone_sf">bird watching via the Internet</a>. I
haven't been able to test it out yet (20 user
limit apparently) but this is certainly cool.
Personally, I can't imagine it replacing
actually being out in the field by any small amount.
</p>
</article>
New “time” and “meter” elements will help search engines to better identify content relating to Time, obviously and in the meter element – numbers. Content can be appropriately date/time stamped and with this tag, a search engine could pull the info and use specific time stamps appropriately. The meter element allows a site owner to represent a numeric value in a specific range such as salaries and percentages. Both of these elements lean towards the concept of the semantic web in which search engines are better able to identify and retrieve relevant data.
<p>I am writing this example at
<time>5:35 P.M. on April 23rd</time>.
</p>
<p>An entry level programmer in Silicon Valley
can expect to start around <meter>$90,000</meter> per year.
</p>
It has always been common to use “em” and “strong” to add emphasis or stress the importance of content in portions of your content. The new “mark” element differs from these as it’s used specifically for highlighting a piece of text within the page content. People have always used “strong” and “em” for this because there was a lack of anything better to use. Now, you can appropriately use the “mark” term in your content and html. There is a foreseeable possibility that search engines will adjust the way they read content, plucking out “marked” text for search results based on relevancy to search terms.
The Great <m>Egret</m> (also known as the
American <m>Egret</m>) is a large white wading bird found worldwide.
The Great <m>Egret</m> flies with slow wing beats. The
scientific name of the Great <m>Egret</m> is <i>Casmerodius
albus</i>.
Lastly, the embedded media elements we use so frequently (video and audio) are going to much easier to optimize. The “video” and “audio” tags are self-sufficient and the alt descriptions, for accessibility, are included in those tags. It won’t be necessary to use “noscript”. Here’s a clean example:
<video src="http://www.cafeaulait.org/birds/sora.mov" />
<audio src="spacemusic.mp3"
autoplay="autoplay" loop="20000" />
HTML has some revolutionary new elements that are going to simply and streamline tasks for both web designers and SEO consultants alike. While some popular browsers may take time evolving to new standards we can expect that we’ll start to see new elements being put to practice very soon in mainstream websites.
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Joerg Weishaupt is a 48 year old entrepreneur, software architect, search engine optimization and social media expert. Joerg has been building a lot of profitable Internet businesses since he put his first website online in 1995. He is also one of the founders and partners of Social Media Science LLC, where he launched a content syndication network called SYNND.
Joerg resides in a small, quiet community about 100 miles outside of Munich, Germany. If you ever seek to find him, look for where the cows gather.
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