As more people become aware of HTML5 it’s time to review how tagging written content will impact search engine optimisation. Tags like and are redundant - instead and have been in use for a few years by many blogging and web developer tools. Now the HTML5 standard recognises that and should only be used for visual style.
You can do more with CSS styles
If you remember writing HTML back in the 90’s you might be more comfortable using and .. I still prefer to use
too. It’s just age, I think.
But seriously - and I’m learning this myself - it’s easier to setup a CSS stylesheet to do the same and more. Perhaps the most obvious reason is that tags like can be plastered all throughout at blog post and end up looking alot LIKE IM SHOUTING WITHOUT ANY MEANING.
The point here is that using CSS you can set the look and feel of text - I like this highlighter effect. I like how I can update the style at anytime and know that this style will be applied across the site.
WordPress and other tools support &
Somewhere along the way, most web blogs switched to using and instead. WordPress made this switch a few years back. You probably don’t notice, you probably didn’t care. You’re missing out then.
& are critical thanks to HTML5
The careful use of and need to be included in your SEO optimisation strategy. That’s because the HTML5 standard has recognised these tags as being important to the text but that and are for markup and not for indicating importance.
To be clear is styling your text to make it look bold but tell any reader or search engine that the text is important. So it makes good sense to highlight a few keywords with . It also makes sense to not highlight everything as instead use or another CSS style to achieve the same thing!.
Good luck with tagging your content
Ok I had a lot of fun writing this particular blog post - browsers like HTML and tags, so it became quite a task to write a post using and .. remember careful tagging of your content is good. Careless tagging of content is just noise
Tags:Read more from my blog for an introduction and quick tips on developing in Hugo or UCTD.
Meet the author
An experienced management consultant and business leader interested in digital transformation, product centred design and scaled agile. If I'm not writing about living with UCTD (an autoimmune disease), I'm probably listening to music, reading a book or learning more about wine.
