If you’ve had your website for some time and haven’t updated/upgraded it, perhaps you’ve never heard of the term HTML5. Or maybe you have, but don’t know what it means or how it can affect your online presence.
HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language, and is the default coding language used to build websites. As the web has expanded and “grown up”, so too has the languages used to create the pages that we see. The newest incarnation is referred to as HTML5, and offers a variety of improvements for the user side. These include, but are not limited to: file storage, native video and audio support, 3D graphics rendering, rich snippets, and cleaner semantics.
What are semantics? It is the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning. According to HTML5Rocks.com,
“The Web is text and text has a meaning. Ultimately the content that our browsers read is pure text. Web sites and web applications have been created in an ecosystem where text based content is linkable, searchable and mashable. In the open web scenario our content can be shown, fed and remixed by third parties, search engines and accessibility tools. All these benefits don’t come for free. Automated tools can only do half of the job at recognizing the nature of the content. The better job the developer does at marking the right semantics of the content the easier will be for the rest of the agents to deal with it.”
So, how does that apply to us? Well, when coding with HTML5, we are given the ability to house the header and footer in tags with their respective names, articles in tags named article, have form inputs specifically for emails and phone numbers, etc. Now when search engines crawl your website, they know what each element means and where the actual content is placed. This creates a distinct hierarchy to the site, allowing your important aspects to shine through, and therefore can potentially boost your search ranking.
Want to know more about the benefits of HTML5, and how it can be used for your website? Please contact us so we can help you get the most out of your space in the online community!