Understanding HTML Semantics
Understanding HTML semantics is imperative to creating your website’s structure. HTML is fundamental the digital landscape of the web, providing the structure and meaning that browsers rely upon to render and interpret content correctly. HTML semantics are a language gives developers a clear and standardized way to structure content, which benefits both developers and designers working on a project.
Website Structure
By now, we have established that HTML’s primary use is creating structure. Let’s take a look at how this structure is built in the language of HTML.
<header> is used for the introductory elements of a page like titles and logos.
<nav> is used the format a website’s navigation.
<body> is used for the main content of a website.
<article> is for independent pieces of content on a site. It is self-contained, and unlike <body> there can be multiples of these.
<section> is used to group content together. There can be multiples of of these too but note that they are not self-contained.
<aside> is for less important infomation and is often used for sidebars
<footer> is used for the information at the bottom of a website for content like contact and copyright information or another navigation.
As you can see in the photo to the right, these tags come together to form your website coherently for ease and hierarchy.
You can structure your text with HTML tags as well. For example, tags like <h1> are used for heading and <h2> through <h6> are used to create headers and subheader’s of varying sizes. The <p> tag defines paragraphs, <a> created an anchor for links>. Use <ol> to create ordered lists and <ul> to create unordered lists. You can also change your text weight and size with tags Lin <b> for bold, <em> is used for italics. The list goes on, but I recommend reviewing and referring to this list of tags from W3Schools for the comprehensive list.
HTML and SEO
HTML is also important to SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. This is because the structure of our HTML help search engines like Google to determine the content of our website during a search in a process called “crawling. Understanding how to use HTML and its semantics can contribute to improved SEO performance by enhancing how search engines interpret, index, and display your web content.
SEO is important because it affects the ranking of a website significantly. Using HTML and SEO best-practices are a sure way of being seen more by both search engine bots and potential audiences. Without proper HTML, a website is at-risk of being buried in the many websites that populate the internet.
HTML semantics lie at the very core of modern web development, providing effective usability, accessibility, and effective communication of information across the digital landscape. It is necessary to first understand these semantics when beginning your web development journey.