The global implementation of the new HTML standard, HTML5, is still undoubtedly a number of years away, but it is important that SEO‘s are ahead of the game and understand how search engines may spider sites using HTML5 markup.

Although no-one is sure how exactly search engines will adapt their algorithm’s to support this new standard, it is important to consider how some of the new HTML element tags could affect the relevancy and authority of the content within.

<header> tag

This new tag is the more obvious tag that could affect SEO performance. This tag will surely carry the same impact as the various numbered header element tags of HTML4, but will facilitate the ability to nest various other HTML elements within, enabling us to assign high priority to more information than just the content within regular <h#> tags. The ability to nest multiple elements within the new <header> tag enables us to create semantically richer page headers along with more readable code for developers.
&lt;header&gt;
&lt;h1&gt;New Page!&lt;/h1&gt;
&lt;p id=’version’&gt;Version 1.1&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/header&gt;

<article> tag

Another interesting HTML5 tag for SEO in particular is the <article> tag. This tag will represent an independent piece or entry of content, for example, a news article or blog post such as this! We can assume search engines will assign greater priority to content within these tags compared to other, more insignificant elements on the page, as the content within will be the core makeup of the page.

Again, using <article> will render much more lightweight and semantically rich mark-up, and thus we can assume faster search engine spidering.
&lt;article&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;New Article&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Lorem ipsum….&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;small&gt;Posted by … on 23rd January&lt;/small&gt;
&lt;/article&gt;

<time> tag

With the recent implementation of Google and Bing’s realtime search efforts, there is potential for HTML5′s <time> tag to have significant effect on real time content search. Web sites such as blogs and news publications with constantly updating content may benefit from the semantic relevancy of this new tag, and search engines will be able to quickly pick out exactly when your blog was posted by viewing the machine readable datetime attribute:
&lt;article&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;New Article&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Lorem ipsum….&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;small&gt;Posted by … on &lt;time datetime="2010-01-23"&gt;23rd January&lt;/time&gt;&lt;/small&gt;
&lt;/article&gt;

<aside> tag

The <aside> tag is preserved for content with a lower relevance in comparison with the main content. Examples could include ‘related posts’, ‘related products’ or ‘supporting information’. We can wrap this secondary content on our pages in <aside> tags and although user experience isn’t affected, search engines can assign more authority to the main content on the page, and less so to the secondary content.
Another interesting future consideration is how search engines will index rich user generated content like audio and video. The inclusion of <audio> and <video> tags in HTML5 allow text alternatives to be placed within the tags themselves, which opens up the potential for search engines to index video and audio too!

These are just a few of the additional features added to the HTML5 specification. Each sport their own unique advantages, but collectively, they promote more semantically sound document structure, better accessibility and therefore undeniable benefits to your search engine optimisation campaign.

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