What is SEMANTIC HTML? and How do we write HTML correctly?

What are your principles when writing HTML?

• Write code according to other people, use any tag.
• Do not write by yourself, but let the program write it such as Dreamweaver.
• Written manually, all in accordance with the web standard and Semantic HTML Theory.

Writing HTML in all of the above methods does not affect the way the website looks. But it affects to Search Engine or programs / devices such as Screenreader, Jaws, etc. that help blind people to listen the content on the website that they are open.

This is to reduce the limitations of users to access the content of our website equally known as “Web Accessibility”. Whether you are a full 32 or a disabled person , different mobile phones, different networks, etc. You will need to receive news and information equally. There are several ways, Semantic HTML is one of the ways to make our website more Web Accessibility. (Let me explain the principle of Web Accessibility separately in one more article.)

What is Semantic HTML?

Semantic HTML is how to write HTML meaningful. It is to define what the content of our website pages are. What is the theme, what is the secondary content, menu, date/time, author, etc. and this interpretation depends on the HTML we write to describe them.

HTML5 was born to be Semantic HTML.

HTML version 5 has added and reduced some HTML tags for a meaningful result to be Semantic HTML.

HTML Old version/ XHTML

• “div” doesn’t indicate what the contents are.

• “span” doesn’t indicate what the contents are.

HTML5

• “article” indicates that the content is an article.
• “aside” indicates that it is the non-essential part of the content and may not be related to the main content.

The above tag is an example of HTML5 that has been added for the more descriptive effect of HTML, so it is the coder’s job to understand what kind of content each HTML tag is used for and then use the tag. Those are used correctly by studying each tag at https://www.w3schools.com/tags/default.asp.

And when we have studied the various tags and what they are for, before starting to write HTML, we need to “Interpret the content” correctly first.

Understand the content before writing HTML.

• Before writing HTML, you should read the content and understand the content every time what content on that page is main topic, secondary topic, theme, who is the author, etc.
• Once we know what the different parts of the content are, we consider writing the appropriate HTML to convey them again.
• A good HTML should have the main content at the top of the page to allow search engines to crawl faster, so if some secondary content renders above the page for design reasons, we should use CSS to make it appear at the top but HTML is written on the bottom. Because it is not the main content.

Conclusion

Anyone can write HTML because it can display as a website. But to write good HTML as Semantic HTML, not everyone can write it. If we hope to make our website quality, meet the principles of Web Accessibility. And facilitate Search engine to crawl will make the quality of our website higher than others, especially in SEO effect.