Search Marketing Blog
HTML 5 (and Its Impact Upon Optimization)
Posted by Kent Schnepp on 04.20.2009As many Web designers and developers know, HTML has been slowly evolving since it was introduced as a practical mark-up language for the Web in the early 1990’s. In fact, HTML has undergone exactly four major revisions, with the most recent revision taking place in 1997. Given that it has been more than 12 years since there has been any significant change to HTML, I read with great interest the latest post from Mike Pilgrim titled “The Road to HTML 5: Link Relations.”
Mike Pilgrim is a successful author/blogger/programmer who is currently employed by Google, Inc. His informative post sparked my interest in HTML 5, the much anticipated recommendation that is expected to be released in September 2010. Specifically, I wanted to learn more about any changes which could affect search engine optimization efforts. Good thing, I did . . . because here are several important aspects of HTML 5 which should be brought to the attention of the SEO community.
Semantics, Semantics, Semantics
As many of you know, search engines possess great computational power. However, they can’t evaluate the context of a message, paragraph, or block of text. Therefore, search engine algorithms rely on basic HTML elements, such as the H1 Tag, to ascertain the context of specific text, in this case the header. This is called semantics. When the final HTML 5 recommendation is released by the editors Ian Hickson (also employed by Google, Inc.) and David Hyatt (with Apple, Inc.), this semantics concept will be refined and expanded beyond its current iteration.
The Future of Link building: Link Relations
One of the most intriguing recommendations to be featured in HTML 5 will be the enhanced link relation attribute. Link relations provide a way to clarify to the search engines why you are linking to another page. Many of you will be familiar with the ref=nofollow attribute, which “indicates that the link is not endorsed by the original author or publisher of the page” (source). However, you may not be familiar with several of the other link relation attributes that have been added to or enhanced since the previous HTML 4 spec. Therefore, let’s take a look at a few relations that could have significant implications to search engine optimization and link building.
rel=alternate
The “alternate” relation simply indicates that the referenced document is an alternate representation of the current document. This is important to anyone who has a multi-language site, PDF’s with duplicate content, or RSS/XML feeds. Typically, this relationship attribute would be used when you have duplicate content that resides in a different file format, or when the same content exists in a different language.
rel=archives
The “archives” relation will be extremely valuable to bloggers, as it will solve many of the duplicate content issues associated with the major blogging platforms. This relation indicates that the referenced document is a collection of records or archives.
rel=author
The “author” keyword, as you can probably guess, indicates that the referenced document provides additional information about the author of the specified content. This relation has potential for increasing authority and trust, specifically when you are quoted or referenced in a document.
rel=nofollow
The “nofollow” relation has not changed much, although the description has been expanded to the following: “[rel=nofllow] indicates that the link is not endorsed by the original author or publisher of the page, or that the link to the referenced document was included primarily because of a commercial relationship between people affiliated with the two pages” (source).
What Else Is New in HTML 5?
There are many, many more changes to come in HTML 5; some which may have significant impact upon search engine optimization and link building strategies. These changes include a new Header Tag, new time elements, and new phrase elements. You can read more about them in the most recent HTML 5 Draft Recommendation, the W3C Working Draft and HTML 5 Differences From HTML 4.
If you have come across any other refinements or additions that were released in the latest draft of HTML 5, please let us know!
