Google’s John Mueller, in an SEO Office Hours session, answered a question about whether the
John answered the question directly but there is a fair bit of nuance that was left out of his answer that needs to be addressed.
Does the Element Have an Impact on Google?
The person asking the question about the
They also wanted to know if wrapping product listing content in an
This is the question:
“Does the use of an
HTML tag have an impact on Google? Is it better to put the content of a product listing page in an tag?”
This is how Mueller answered:
“The
HTML element does not have any particular effect in Google Search. This is similar to lots of other kinds of HTML tags.
There’s so much more to using HTML than just Google Search though!
Sometimes there are accessibility or semantic reasons to use a specific kind of markup, so don’t only focus on SEO.”
Semantic HTML Elements
John Mueller correctly said that there are “semantic reasons” for some HTML elements.
In general, the word “semantic” relates to what the meaning of a word is.
But in computing, the word semantic relates to the purpose of the code.
Understanding the role of HTML code helps developers understand what that code is doing.
Semantic HTML tells developers (or search engines) what the purpose of that code is.
For example, the
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