There are many benefits to using semantic HTML when coding websites. For starters, it makes your code more readable and understandable for both humans and machines. Additionally, semantic HTML can improve your website’s accessibility, search engine optimization, and overall maintainability. This blog post will discuss the four benefits of semantic HTML in greater detail. Whether you’re just starting to learn to code or a seasoned coder, we hope you find this information helpful!
We will be discussing the 4 main benefits of semantic HTML if semantic HTML is difficult for beginners and why you should be using it on your site and in future coding projects. The sooner you use it, the sooner it will become second nature to use semantic HTML.
What is semantic HTML?
Semantic HTML is a subset of HTML used to describe the meaning of portions of a document, as opposed to its presentation. In other words, semantic HTML helps ensure that a document’s content is conveyed properly, regardless of how it is being displayed.
Semantic markup is a method of generating and organizing HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) in such a manner that it emphasizes the content and meaning rather than its look. Semantics and accessibility are built into HTML by design, but they’re useless unless applied appropriately. Understanding the structure of your content and how people and machines will interpret it is essential to writing semantic markup.
HTML has always had semantic markup but HTML5 included even more semantic tags like <section>, HTML has always had semantic markup but HTML5 included even more semantic tags like <section>, <article>, <footer>, <nav>, and <aside>. You can learn more about these and what they are here. Semantic HTML aims to distinguish between different sorts of data as easily as possible for browsers, developers, and crawlers. In short semantic HTML tags help clarify what information is on the page and its importance.
Previously, a website could have been organized solely with <div> tags, leaving search engines, crawlers, and other developers in the dark about what that page is about. Developers may be more clear about overall content and write it so that computers can comprehend using semantic markup.
Is Semantic HTML Difficult for beginners?
Some aspects of semantic HTML can be more difficult for beginners to grasp than others.
One common challenge for beginners is understanding the difference between semantic and non-semantic HTML elements. Semantic HTML tags are used to mark up the structure of a document, while non-semantic tags are used for styling and presentation. So, for example, the <strong> tag is a non-semantic tag, while the <h1> tag is semantic.
Another challenge for beginners is understanding when to use specific semantic tags. For example, should you use the <h1> tag or the <header> tag to mark up a document’s header? There is no single answer to this question as it depends on the specific content and layout of the document. You will also learn what to do in this situation as you build up your coding experience.
In the above example, a good rule of thumb is to use the <h1> tag for the most important header in a document, and then use the <h2> tag, <h3> tag, and so on for subsequent headers. If you want to learn more about heading tags and when you should use them, you can read our article on Heading tags here
Benefits of Semantic HTML
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
This one should be pretty obvious, and when most people think about the benefits of semantic HTML, they think about SEO.
Understanding and using semantic markup ensures that your content reaches your intended audience. The relevance of your target keywords is determined by their position in the HTML hierarchy. Keywords placed in a <h1> tag, for example, are given greater weight than those in a <p> tag.
Semantic HTML, therefore, assists search engines in ranking your website based on the most relevant and meaningful content on the page.
Semantic HTML is an excellent technique to tell search engines what to index. Once your content is indexed appropriately, you can gain significant traffic organically simply by appearing on the first page of Google Search Engine results. Ranking organically can save you or your client thousands in advertising costs!
Website Code Maintenance
Every day, developers read hundreds of lines of code, so anything that makes their job simpler is worthwhile. Developers can find certain page items faster with semantically rich markup than with a pile of <div> tags.
If you’re working on a team, readability is vital because you can’t expect colleagues (or even your future self) to understand what is going on just by looking at the code. The better you arrange your information, though, the faster you can identify the page structure, making your development more effective for the long run.
If you are here because you are a budding developer, adding semantic HTML is as important as adding comments in your code – your future self will thank you!
Accessibility
As websites have become more complex, they have also become more difficult to access by people with disabilities. Screen readers rely on semantically rich HTML, and by using semantic HTML, you’re making sure that blind, deaf and older users can enjoy the content they are looking for. The more accessible your site, the more traffic you will generate.
Design
Many would think that HTML has nothing to do with design because that is what CSS is for, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. One of the benefits of semantic HTML is design because semantic tags also allow you to customize your text and build more robust CSS styles.
Semantic HTML also allows you to easily make style changes and page-wide components if you need to.
Conclusion – Benefits of Semanatic HTML
While it may seem like a fast option not to use semantic HTML in the short term, the benefits of semantic HTML outweigh the cost. If you are starting a project, try to start the project the right way, using all of the available tools.
If you are unsure of what semantic HTML tags you have available, feel free to check out this article ” What is Semantic HTML “.
I hope that this article helped or inspired you on your coding journey! Click Here to join a community of new coders just like you on our Discord Server.
