Inside HTML Tags: A Semantic Meaning
HTML tags mark up a text document for Web publishing. The browser takes care of interpreting those tags and determines how the HTML document should look. The browser even tries to make sense from HTML document that use incorrect tags or tags not properly used or closed. However, there are other things to consider in addition to having HTML document display properly in a Web browser.
HTML tags can have a meaning that emphasizes the content and the meaning of an HTML document that can help programs such as Web crawlers and search engines to understand the content and importance of various elements of an HTML document. An example is the STRONG tag that instructs the Web browser to display the text as bolded text and then instructs the Web crawlers and search engines to treat the bolded text more importantly than the text surrounding it. Another example is the Label tag that is associated with form fields giving instructions of what the input should be and so forth.
The data table and chart shows the usage of few HTML tags that have certain semantic meaning, on three samples of Web sites. The first is general shopping sites; the second is shopping sites having favorable search engine positions and the third a large sample of general Web sites having favorable search engine positions.
| Tags with Semantic Meaning: Average # of Tags | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Observed Element | General Merchandise | General Merchandise SE | Prominent SE Position |
| strong | 9.8 | 9.4 | 9.3 |
| small | 11.7 | 4.8 | 6.8 |
| code | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.1 |
| pre | 1.0 | 0.0 | 1.8 |
| blockquote | 1.6 | 1.0 | 2.1 |
| address | 3.0 | 0.0 | 0.7 |
| cite | 0.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 |
| fieldset | 1.4 | 1.6 | 2.2 |
| label | 2.1 | 2.8 | 4.5 |
| legend | 1.8 | 1.6 | 1.4 |
What stands out by looking at the data is the similar usage of the STRONG tag, but the SMALL tag usage is very different between the samples. The LABEL tag's frequency is more on general Web sites having favorable search engine positions.
Making HTML code reflect the content, intent and meaning of a Web page is very important and will become even more important in the near future with the arrival of HTML 5. Whether using HTML tags with semantic meaning in mind will affect Web site's performance with major search engines is not guaranteed, but if it helps in the overall picture why not use them cleverly.
Related links:
Video: Semantic HTML and Skinnable CSS
