Comments on: XHTML 2.0, HTML5 and SEO

By: Ashley Sheridan

Ashley Sheridan — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 02:30:25 +0000

I think that the proposed new HTML 5 spec is something that’s been long needed. I think the trouble though, is that a lot of people are hung up on how it will display in a browser, without realising the huge semantic benefits to be had.

As soon as search engines start to look for HTML 5 tags in web pages, then anyone who doesn’t use them is likely to fall behind. The spec is designed to fail gracefully in non-compliant browsers (read Internet Explorer) and there are countless tutorials out there to help write code that can work in both old and new browsers alike.

This new spec not only brings possible benefits for SEO, but accessibility also. I for one will be making a start on implementing this in my work.

By: Sam Langdon

Sam Langdon — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:58:13 +0000

It seems search engine support for semantic mark-up is growing, with Google recently releasing events rich snippets in addition to people, reviews and videos. RDFa & microformats are both supported by HTML 5, so these SE changes will remain pertinent after it starts to permeate in the years to come. Google has also announced how it's shifting its focus away from Gears toward HTML5. It looks like RDFa and HTML 5 will have a big impact on search as we seem to be moving ever closer to a Semantic Web.

By: richardbaxterseo

richardbaxterseo — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 09:31:15 +0000

Hi Dennis SO far, very little visible changes in the way SERPs are presented. That said there's definitely a move from Google to show support for this format (and structured data pages) with the launch of the rich snippet preview tool. You might find this article useful reading on using structured markup as a "future of SEO" idea. Thanks for dropping by,

By: Dennis Franklin

Dennis Franklin — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:17:41 +0000

Does anyone know if any of these changes that are being discussed here have been implemented in Google, Yahoo.ect? I heard another site talking about the same thing and this seems like a major change to me.

By: Patrice Albertus

Patrice Albertus — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:32:57 +0000

Big job and lots of laboratory test to do with the news headliones attributes ! SEO semantic becomes framed like other metadata (microformats snippets, RFDa) and each sense paragraph will be structured with to provides search engine pr-formatted XML

By: Onl

Onl — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 00:06:18 +0000

Interesting post and I’d love for the next revisions to be released, however looking at the current web browser market share indicators as well as overall web analytics there is still a shocking amount of IE6 users out there. Given the fact that the current main browsers don’t yet support it, and a fair amount of people still visit my website using Firefox 1.0.x the last thing I want to do is limit my user base compatibility then make my website slightly more optimized. Cheers.

By: richardbaxterseo

richardbaxterseo — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 16:44:20 +0000

I don’t think it’s futile, I think it’s a very interesting subject which is why I wrote about it. It will be a long time (a very long time) before any of this stuff is standardised but why not expand your understanding of what developments are ahead of us? Isn’t that why SEO and technology in general is so great to be involved in?

By: Heath Huffman

Heath Huffman — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 14:19:38 +0000

Why even bother worrying about it? Let the market decide when and which standards will be the new standards. That will be a few years by itself. Then you have the issue of all of the browsers catching up with the new standards… another few years. Once all that’s worked out, then I suggest you worry about what changes you need to learn. Until then, isn’t it kind of futile?

By: richardbaxterseo

richardbaxterseo — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:27:47 +0000

You’re right – from a developer / SEO perspective these new changes aren’t exactly daunting or difficult to digest. The less technical SEO should definitely refresh his / her knowledge though.

I read somewhere that a Googler is on the HTML5 panel – can’t remember who though. Thoughts?

By: Tanner Christensen

Tanner Christensen — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:38:41 +0000

Interesting changes, without a doubt.

But for avid SEOs and programmers, it doesn’t look like much of a dramatic change from what has been done in the past. What’s really going to be interesting is to see which (if any) search engine is first to fully support the changes.