Semantic Markup for SEO Friendly Websites
Posted by Frances van den Berg on 21 Sep 2009 | Tagged as: Copywriting
I’m a copywriter, not a coder and I don’t like fancy coding jargon because it scares me and because my mind shuts down like a malfunctioning computer when I hear it. This explains why when I heard about semantic markup for the first time, I was slightly resistant to the idea, until I starting reading about the benefits and realised that it’s actually quite simple for even a right-brain dominated writer to understand.
A simplified definition of semantic markup is as follows:
But let’s take a step back and think of semantics in a more general context. Semantics was originally a linguistics term and dictionary.com gives the following definition:
Now that we’ve covered that definition, you ask, ‘what do linguistics and coding have in common’? That’s an easy one. Like you and me, algorithms are all about interpreting meaning. But, like with you and me, if you don’t write in a language they can understand, they will be unable to perform the function you ultimately require from them (which is to rank, rank, rank for SEO). To give an oversimplified example, if you order something from a restaurant where they don’t speak English, you may end up eating something you didn’t want to.
This takes us to semantic markup in a coding context. Web semantics is really about using your code well to speak to the algos in a language they understand, i.e HTML. Some of us right-brain dominated copywriters like to use our enter keys when uploading content on the web, or even bolding headings so that the reader’s attention is drawn to them. This may have worked for school projects, but less so for the net.
The algos aren’t going to know that if you bold a piece of text you intend it to be the heading. They’ll simply treat your heading like the rest of your content and what will happen then is that your article won’t get indexed as it should because, hang on, there’s no heading!
This is so easily fixed that it’s almost a crime not to do it like this in the first place: simply add heading tags (H1 and H2 tags) to your headline so that both your human and machine readers will understand you perfectly.
Similarly, don’t simply press ‘enter’ between paragraphs but use ‘p’ elements to open and close a paragraph and indicate that there is, indeed, a paragraph present.
There are several more examples, such as lists and emphasising texts where using the correct elements is imperative.
Now that you understand how it works, what’s in it for you?
It makes your life and the life of your colleagues easier. Optimising your website is a doddle if the correct coding is already in place; furthermore, editing your content is now a walk in the park as you don’t have paragraphs sitting oddly on top each other and lists going haywire. Lastly, it makes the algos happy and ultimately makes your boss happy too, because you’re doing it the right way and the results will shine through.
