What's
New in HTML 5?
HTML 5 follows the way the Net evolved in the last
years and includes many useful tags and elements. At first glance, it might look
as if HTML 5 is going in the direction of a programming language (i.e. PHP) but
actually this is not so – it is still an XML–based presentation language. The
new tags and elements might make HTML 5 look more complex but this is only at
first glance.
HTML 5 is not very different from HTML 4. One of
the basic ideas in the development of HTML 5 was to ensure backward
compatibility and because of that HTML 5 is not a complete revamp of the HTML
specification. So, if you had worries that you will have to start learning it
from scratch, these worries are groundless.
How the Changes in
HTML 5 Will Affect SEO?
As a SEO expert, you are most likely
interested mainly in those changes in the HTML 5 specification, which will
affect your work. Here are some of them:
Improved page segmentation. Search engines are
getting smarter and there are many reasons to believe that even now they are
applying page segmentation. Basically, page segmentation means that a page is
divided into several separate parts (i.e. main content, menus, headers,
footers, links sections, etc.) and these parts are treated as separate entries.
At present, there is no way for a Web master to tell search engines how to
segment a page but this is bound to change in HTML 5.
A new <article> tag:
The new <article> tag is probably the
best addition from a SEO point of view. The <article> tag allows to mark
separate entries in an online publication, such as a blog or a magazine. It is
expected that when articles are marked with the <article> tag, this will
make the HTML code cleaner because it will reduce the need to use <div>
tags. Also, probably search engines will put more weight on the text inside the
<article> tag as compared to the contents on the other parts of the page.
A new <section> tag:
The new <section> tag can be
used to identify separate sections on a page, chapter, book. The advantage is
that each section can have its separate HTML heading. As with the
<article> tag, it can be presumed that search engines will pay more
attention to the contents of separate sections. For instance, if the words of a
search string are found in one section, this implies higher relevance as
compared to when these words are found all across the page or in separate
sections.
A new <header> tag:
The new <header> tag (which
is different from the head element) is a blessing for SEO experts because it
gives a lot of flexibility. The <header> tag is very similar to the
<H1> tag but the difference is that it can contain a lot of stuff, such
as H1, H2, H3 elements, whole paragraphs of text, hard–coded links (and this is
really precious for SEO), and any other kind of info you feel relevant to
include.
A new <footer> tag:
The <footer> tag might not be as useful
as the <header> one but still it allows to include important information
there and it can be used for SEO purposes as well. The <header> and
<footer> tags can be used many times on one page – i.e. you can have a
separate header/footer for each section and this gives really a lot of
flexibility.
A new <nav> tag:
Navigation is one of the important factors for
SEO and everything that eases navigation is welcome. The new <nav> tag
can be used to identify a collection of links to other pages.
As you see, the new tags follow the
common structure of a standard page and each of the parts (i.e. header, footer,
main section) has a separate tag. The tags we described here, are just some (but
certainly not all) of the new tags in HTML 5, which will affect SEO in some
way. For instance, <audio>, <video> or <dialogue> tags are
also part of the HTML 5 standard and they will allow to further separate the
content into the adequate categories. There are many other tags but they are of
relatively lower importance and that is why they are not discussed.
For now HTML 5 is still far in the
future. When more pages become HTML 5–compliant, search engines will pay more
attention to HTML 5. Only then it will be possible to know how exactly search
engines will treat HTML 5 pages. The mass adoption of HTML 5 won't happen soon
and it is a safe bet to say that for now you can keep to HTML 4 and have no
concerns. Additionally, it will take some time for browsers to adjust to HTML
5, which further delays the moment when HTML 5 will be everywhere.
However, once HTML 5 is accepted
and put to use, it will be the dominating standard for the years to come and
that is why you might want to keep an eye on what other web masters are doing,
just to make sure that you will not miss the moment when HTML 5 becomes the
defacto standard.
