What Is Semantic / Structural Markup and Why Does It Matter?
I always found the definition of “Semantic / Structural Markup” murky on the intertubes. I thought Jeffrey Zeldman described it well in his book Designing with Web Standards.
What Is Semantic / Structural Markup?
Markup is “semantic” when tags are chosen according to what they mean. For example, tagging a headline
h1because it is the most important headline on the page is a semantic authoring practice. Tagging a headlineh1“to make it look big” is not. … I use the phrase “structural markup” to mean pretty much the same thing as “semantic markup.” (”Structural markup” takes its name specifically from the idea that the web document has an outline-like structure.) - Jeffrey Zeldman, Designing with Web Standards
Zeldman goes on to make many great points on why semantic markup matters, here’s my paraphrase.
Why Does Semantic / Structural Markup Matter?
- it helps make web sites more accessibile
- it provides a means to meet government mandatied web accessibility guidelines
- it’s a critical component for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because the Google search engine is the biggest blind user on the web - Zeldman
- doing the right thing is the right way to do things - developers should have a sense of pride in being a craftsman :)
- did I mention Search Engine Optimization?
If you’re interested in learning more about semantic markup then view A List Apart’s source code, or read their many online resources: Topics: Code: HTML and XHTML.