So what’s the big news of last week? Okay, I promise not to mention the iPad. Oops. Sorry. To be perfectly honest, I am looking forward to seeing the proposed product in practice, but may not actually buy one. The huge reason for this is the lack of Flash support. Now, don’t flog me – I don’t like flash for the web in general, however a huge portion of video and game sites rely on it. Steve Jobs seems to like it even less than I do:
He called Adobe “lazy” and confirmed that ipad’s would not feature flash – ever “so there. Source FreshEgg Blog
What does that mean? Well the screenshot below kind of summarizes quite succinctly:
Ok, so what?
To me, the real story is that major media owners may start taking HTML 5 more seriously, if only to ensure that they do not lose traffic opportunities because of lack of iPad support. On the other hand, it prompted me to pull out my bookmarks on HTML 5 and start reading – I am not technically adept, and need to continuously read up on stuff. The stuff below is a result of me going through those bookmarks..
HTML affecting SEO?
Any markup changes can and will have effect on SEO; from lowering / increasing load times by reducing code bloat, to identifying key elements of a page.
Not only that, but as an SEO it is important to know how your on page link placement should be carried out, and how search engines will change their view on certain links if the site is coded in HTML 5. Will there be a wider use of the Rel attributes of links so as to establish relationships? How will those attributes play a role in Search Optimisation?
What about the rest of the On Page Links? For example, will links in the Footer element be heavily discounted? We know that search engines already segment the common links on the page, and have potential signals they use to identify those common elements. Should we make their work easier by actively identifying that content? Some SEOs I know actively refuse to use indicators such as <div id=”footer”>, and switch them to non identifiable div ID’s so as to dampen the signals given out.
Currently, most content is wrapped in < div > or < span > tags regardless of what it is. There are new tags being introduced by HTML 5 with semantic meaning, such as < article > (for an independent piece of content eg. blog post or news article), < nav > (for navigation), < footer >,< header >, < audio >, < video > and even a < dialogue > element. < aside > can be used to indicate a piece of content removed slightly from the rest of the page in terms of relevance. Source: Big Mouth Media
At the moment most of us will be speculating on what these changes mean, but most of us have caught onto certain common changes that we all think will impact on-site SEO.
HTML 5 will introduce new features that help us (and search engines) better dissect a webpage. In the past, <div> elements have been used everywhere where, in HTML 5 an array of elements will be available to describe navigation, text sections, articles and headers. The improved sectioning could quite easily assist a search engine in understanding the layout of a page. Source: SEOGadget
At this point in time, I cant really advise on HTML 5 and its effects on SEO, but I can say that whatever it will be, it is sure to be some sort of shift worth keeping an eye on. Definitely Video Optimisation for SERPs will be impacted.
The fact is search engines are making more an effort to semantically index and analyse data is demonstrated by their continued support of microformats.
A maybe less highlighted tid bit is that the HTML5 editors are Ian Hickson of Google, and David Hyatt of Apple. (take that info as you may…)
Resources
Although you should read the content I have linked to in the body of the post, here are a few additional links worth looking at.
- Edward Lewis (@pageoneresults) always does a thorough job of identifying elements. I read his SEO and html 4 elements piece with great interest, and am looking forward to his take on html 5.
- Dive into HTML is an ongoing manuscript for a book to be published by O’Reilly.
- The Bruce Clay Blog does a decent overview on what HTML 5 means for SEO and Video Optimisation.
- Hobo Web does a simple code example on how common elements on a page would look if coded on html 5.
- HTML 5 and Web Applications.
- Rich Snippets Testing Tool (via SEL).
- Rich Snippets and SEO By Pete Young
- Google Bets Big on HTML 5 post by Tim O’Reilly.
- Youtube HTML5 Video Beta.
- Google Takes some shortcuts when it comes to its own home page code.