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Be Specific: Using Semantic XHTML for Search Engines

Using the <acronym>, <abbr>, and <address> tags to improve readability for disabled users, web crawlers, and search engines.

You want to make your website as informative as possible, right? For search engines, users – everybody. Help search engines, disabled (blind) users, and any users who may not understand the meaning of your acronym or abbreviation by using semantic XHTML tags like the <acronym>, <abbr>, and <address> tags in context.

If your website, for example, is about Medical Transcriptions, but you refer to them on the website only using the medical jargon MT, search engines and users looking at small snippets of text may confuse the acronym “MT” for Media Temple (MT), or the abbreviation for Montana (MT), so use the <acronym> tag to specify what you are referring to. The more specific you can be, the more likely you are to rank for those relevant terms, and as a result, your users content to be more informative and useful.

To see it in action, hover your mouse over this: XHTML. You’ll see a tool tip with the written-out version: Extensible HyperText Markup Language. If users or search engines don’t already know what the acronym stands for, then the title attribute (see below) will inform them, and text-to-speech engines will be able to see that the full term that the acronym represents as well. 

Finally, using the <address> tag is getting increased attention lately, especially for local businesses and websites that users would search for with Google Local Search, Maps, YellowPages.com, Yelp.com, etc. The <address> tag helps to isolate the address from the rest of the copy on your website, making your website more relevant to local or geo targeted search queries, such as “san diego pizza” or “pizza 94023″ (searching by zip code).

Code Examples

How to use the  <acronym> tag:

  1. <acronym title="National Aeronautics and Space Administration">NASA</acronym>
  2. <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym>
  3. <acronym title="Medical Transcription">MT</acronym>

How to use the <abbr> tag:

  1. <abbr title="Utah">UT</abbr>
  2. <abbr title="Corporation">Corp</abbr>.

How to use the <address> tag:

  1. <address>
  2. Address:14 East Anywhere Drive<br />
  3. City, <abbr title="State">ST</state> 55555
  4. </acronym>

When it comes to distinguising between acronyms, initialisms, and abbreviations, the following guides are very useful. When it comes to implementing the <acronym> and <abbr> tags, the W3C appears to suggest that <acronym> should be used for acronyms and initialisms, and <abbr> is used for abbreviated and shortened words (Inc., Gov., etc.).

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One Response to “Be Specific: Using Semantic XHTML for Search Engines”

  1. Brett Bergeron says:
    June 18, 2009 at 12:43 pm

    Line 4 in the last example should read

    Otherwise, very valuable post for people just getting into SEO/markup.

    Reply

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