Comments on: Web Designers Suck at Semantic Markup!

By: Chris Raymond

Chris Raymond — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 19:57:53 +0000

I am a big believer in semantic markup and am frustrated on things I see in otherwise good WP themes, for example. In Thematic, for example, sidebars/widgets are housed in a div with ID of #primary–last time I looked, most people think primary should be the central content, not what’s in a sidebar. Sidebars should be enclosed inside #secondary or #tertiary to reflect semantic order of importance.

And widget writers, and I guess the widget API, put all the content in every dynamic sidebar in unordered lists and nested lists. This is so semantically wacky I don’t know where to start. So if you have a widget with a paragraph about the site, it’ll be nested inside a ul. It’s not a ul.

By: Joseph Cannizzo

Joseph Cannizzo — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:56:40 +0000

@Johnny: Naming it rightcol doesn’t tell the seo bot whats in the column however it could provide structural site data that google could use to prioritize data in that column.

By: Johnny

Johnny — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 06:13:45 +0000

@Ryan: I agree with Ben that you should write an article on Semantic Coding.

@craig: I think you’re missing the point. “Naming it whatever you want” is exactly what semantic coding aims to fix.

“rightCol” doesn’t tell a search engine bot what’s in that column.

“servicesOffered” does.

By: Johnny

Johnny — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 06:13:39 +0000

@Ryan: I agree with Ben that you should write an article on Semantic Coding.

@craig: I think you’re missing the point. “Naming it whatever you want” is exactly what semantic coding aims to fix.

“rightCol” doesn’t tell a search engine bot what’s in that column.

“servicesOffered” does.

By: craig

craig — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 02:33:31 +0000

@Ryan Re: Semantic ID and Class naming; I’ve heard this argument so many times before, but I really think it’s a non-issue. Use a descriptive name that works for you. If the column is currently on the right, name it “rightCol” if you want. Makes sense to anyone who is working with the code. If the client suddenly decides the columns need to be flipped, do a simple “find and replace” and POOF, now they are leftCol. How easy is that?!

By: What is semantic markup and why should web designers use it? « Gaby Tobler

What is semantic markup and why should web designers use it? « Gaby Tobler — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:28:46 +0000

[...] Designers Suck at Semantic Markup! http://www.chicagostyleseo.com/2009/01/web-designers-suck-at-semantic-markup/ The Motive Web Design Glossary http://www.motive.co.nz/glossary/markup.php RSS [...]

By: Tech Reviews

Tech Reviews — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:40:24 +0000

Meta description can be useful, since it is the description shown on Googles search pages!

Headers are importnat, but I feel they should always be mixed with good CSS coding to ensure good looks with good SEO.

By: Barry Wise

Barry Wise — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 11:19:46 +0000

Nice post, and I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels this way

Not only is semantic markup useful, it just helps make the code make sense. Hopefully more designers will pick up on this and start using it more often.

Oh, and thanks for linking to my list, keep up the good work!

By: Ben Robinson

Ben Robinson — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 23:43:33 +0000

Again, thanks for the advice. You should write an article about how internet marketers suck at semantic naming.

Gonna take a gander at those articles and definitely keep this in mind next time I am coding a site.

As for the meta descriptions, I would actually keep using them. Even though Google may choose to ignore them from time to time, without them, you run the risk of a search engine grabbing the completely wrong bit of text to auto insert.

It is similar to what you said about the semantic naming – it is a good habit to get into on an ongoing future basis, but if you have hundreds of past pages to tag, it may not be worth the time.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:51:41 +0000

I’d say the main advantages is if you have a sidebar with an id of #rightbar and then in the css you decide to float it left, you also have to change the naming of the id in the HTML. But lets say the content actually comes secondary to the main content in the HTML, you could name it #secondaryContent and then styling can be handled entirely through the CSS without any further editing required in the HTML.

The aim is to keep your markup flexible by describing the content regardless of how the site may look. Think about the HTML as if there was no such thing as presentational style, how would you name each element in a way that makes sense?

As you can probably guess on complex or low cost sites this can become time consuming and complex, so I’d keep it as something to think about for future sites and implement as and where you can.

Andy Clarke of http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/ and http://forabeautifulweb.com/ has spoken and written about semantic markup and labeling (probably not the right term, identifying maybe?) in the past. You may like to check out his book http://transcendingcss.com/ he’s very much into semantic markup.

I completely support what you’re saying in the article though… and I seem to have missed out bits of your article on my first read through (while at work which may explain it), so sorry if my commented came across as a bit odd.

I’m interested in what you say about not requiring a meta description, I’ve always included one and never really thought about whether it’s really used by search engines. I think I’ll leave it off my next site and see how things go in Google.