What is Semantic HTML5?

Updated March 3, 2025

Markup Your Site To Get a Better Ranking

You might not know what the abbreviation HTML means, but if you are writing content on your blog, you’ll probably have used it before. HTML5, or Hypertext Markup Language, is the markup that search engines use to work out what is important on your page. Learn how to use HTML5 properly to boost your SEO rankings.

It’s All About the Subtext

HTML5 is a way of marking up your blog post so that a search engine can quickly crawl through the text and find meaning. While search engines are intelligent, they are not yet at a level where they can quickly digest a 500-word article and decide what it’s topic is. So, HTML5 is there to help out, by pointing to the most important parts of the article that the search engine needs to focus on.

So how do you use HTML5 tags:

Tag Your Headings – <h> tags are probably the most well-known aspect of HTML. Making sure you use H1, H2, and H3 tags will show the search engine what to read first, second and so on. One important point to remember is that you should use <h> tags in order. Skipping from <h1> to <h4> because the size looks better in your post can confuse search engines.

Be STRONG – Using a strong tag in HTML5 is a way of emphasizing the importance of a word or phrase. It is not to be confused with using Bold to make it LOOK emphasized. You shouldn’t overuse strong tags around all your keywords. But using it to focus attention on one word, or phrase is helpful for the search engine.

EM tag – This helps put emphasis on a particular part of the text. For example, if you were saying; “This chicken is not cooked well” you would stress the “not” part of the sentence. So just like with speaking, adding em tags can help make it clear what the point you are trying to make is.

News Articles – If you’re covering current events or a situation that is changing rapidly, you may be interested in using either the DEL or INS tags. These tags will help you highlight which information has been removed, or changed if it is still relevant to the reader. For example, if you wrote about a major sporting event, and subsequently the result was altered you could use a del tag to show that you are aware of the changes in the result while leaving the article up.

Cite Your Sources – Another useful tag is the CITE tag. You use this if you are referencing the work of another person. If you are citing other online content, you can provide a hyperlink, but if you need to cite something else, a book for example, then you can use the cite tag to make it clear where you are getting your information. This will again help the search engine contextualize your work, and has the added bonus of helping your readers find your sources.

Five HTML5 Headliners

If you use these five basic HTML5 tags you will speed up the time it takes to get your site’s pages crawled by Google and help to improve their comprehension of your content. So get on the HTML train!