New HTML 5 SEO Enhancements
Although HTML 5 is far from being adopted as the new standard and can only be utilized by a few browsers, it contains several advancements that look promising for search engine optimization. At first glance HTML 5 looks more complicated and more resembles a programming language than a document presentation markup language. However, most of the advancements are simply extensions to the tags that have been established in previous versions of the HTML standard. This post outlines a few of the new additions that will make the job of the SEO professional a little easier.
HTML 5 will contain methods for a web master to segment their pages into different segments such as header, main, footer, and links. This will provide web crawlers a means of categorizing the different sections of a page and placing priority on certain sections over others. This will serve to make indexing pages more efficient.
The new article and section tags will also be introduced. These will designate that the text inside is indexable and more emphasis should be placed on this text or data. This will also make web pages cleaner, because it will eliminate the need for div tags and help to set the text within apart from the rest of the page.
A new header tag will also be introduced that can be used instead of the head element. The header tag is similar to the h1 tag in that it can contain lots of different elements including subheadings, links, and even other paragraphs of text that can be read by a search engine crawler.
The footer tag will also be new. It can be used in conjunction with the header tag and they can be placed on the same page many times for each section. They can also contain data that can be indexed by crawlers and help to segment pages that can be indexed the same as multiple URLs. This can help the SEO of a site without having to spread content over multiple pages.
The new navigation tag will also be a positive addition for SEO. The navigation tag will be able to designate and define a collection of links to other pages that can be easily followed and indexed by a web crawler.
The new “audio” and “video” tags may be the most exciting elements that will be introduced in HTML 5. They will help bridge the gap between standard HTML and the plug-in technologies such as Flash and Silverlight. The thing that makes them so exciting for SEO is that they will include clear and easily readable alt elements that can make the content of the video or audio data easily indexable by a web crawler. Entire descriptions and transcripts can be included inside paragraph tags inside these elements that are great for SEO, but will also serve to still provide valuable content to users whose browsers don’t yet support the new tags.
There’s no telling when HTML 5 will actually be adopted as a standard, but with all of the new elements being added hopefully it won’t take too long. Next generation browsers are already starting to recognize some of the tags and web masters are dying to get their hands on them so that should help to speed up the process.
