Does using tags instead of " " good for SEO purposes?
-
I'm currently using <pr>tags for paragraphs and came across an article that said it is better for search engines to see the</pr>
tag than
tag to separate paragraphs. -
You can see that from the W3schools article I linked above: "Even if
works in all browsers, writing
instead is more future proof."HTML worked with the idea that certain tags could be opened but did not need to be closed such as the and
tags. The XHTML standard requires all tags be closed. As I understand the idea, it's just a better means of presenting that every tag is closed.Functionally there is currently no difference BUT it can lead to different behaviors in various browsers if you use invalid code.
-
The HTML5+ will in some years (maybe 5-6 yrs) only support
and similiar tags. You can read more about this at http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp -
Whats the difference?
-
I must say that you absolutely should use
instead of- it's more future-friendly.
-
Where did you get this information though?
-
I was just wondering if any one at SEOmoz has ever heard about it because I couldn't find anything else on the subject online. This was a very helpful answer thank you.
-
I have never heard that theory before today. It does make a bit of sense so I decided to Google it. When I typed in "p tag vs" the auto-complete came up with "p tag vs br tag" and I added in "seo" to the search. There were only two related results.
1. http://www.seo-works.com/p-tags-in-seo.php While the article presents an interesting idea, they offer absolutely no references for the discussion at all. The author's name is not listed, no date, etc. This is where I begin to look at the site itself and it seems like a "build your website in 30 minutes" type of creation where I keep the idea (good ideas can come from anywhere) but I lend absolutely no weight to this article as evidence.
2. http://www.pitstopmedia.com/sem/br-hr-p-pre-tag-seo This page isn't that great either, but it is a huge improvement over the other result. We can see an author name "TraiaN" but it is not a link and there is no information about the author. It has a publish date of Nov 2010 which is good.
What bothers me is the information is presented as factual. It is presented in the same was as if I was to say "the sun is hot". Sure the sun is hot. Everyone knows the sun is hot. But I am not willing to accept the theory that p tags are superior to br tags on the same level.
The second site does reference a search patent from 2004 as evidence to support the statement. The particular section of the patent that is referred to only talks about the desire to apply weighting to words near header tags (h1-h6). Never once is the p tag nor br tag mentioned.
These type of articles really muddy the SEO world by presenting one person's theory as a fact. Neither author has presented even one shred of evidence to support this theory. Neither claimed to have worked at Google and seen the algorithm or have performed any testing. There is no evidence whatsoever that either author has any knowledge about SEO. This is the SEO equivalent of snake-oil sales.
Summary: I am not aware of any evidence linking any weighting to text contained within a
tag versus text separated with a
tag. I suggest you use the best programming practices within your site. Follow the W3 industry standards when coding your site and use tags appropriately. -
tag is the proper formatting for paragraphs and will in theory make it easier for search engines to understand your content.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
NOFOLLOW Links: Can we 100% ignore them for SEO purposes?
Some SEO articles say we can completely ignore NoFollow links. Other articles say they still matter - but then are very vague on what they count for or against. So which is it really? I do realize that they can provide traffic, and for that they are worthwhile. But it is SEO I am asking about... The SEO purpose I am most concerned with is the Link Profile. Separating the Follows from the NoFollows often gives really different anchor text distributions. If they don't matter, why do MOZ and other SEO Analysis programs still include them in their standard reports? (I can see some benefit to having them as part of the in-depth reports) So what's your thoughts? Can we 100% ignore the NoFollows for our SEO analysis?
Technical SEO | | GregB1230 -
Magento Dublicate Content (Noindex and Rel"canonical")
Hi All, Just looking for some advice regarding my website on magento. We by mistake didnt enable canonical tags and noindex tags so had a big problem with dublicate content from filter pages but also have URLs to Cats as Yes so this didnt help with not having canonical tags enabled. We now have everything enabled for a few weeks now but dont see much drop in indexed pages in google. (currently 27k and we have only 5k products) My question basically is how do we speed up noindexation of dublicate content and also would you change URL to cats as No so google just now sees the url to products? (my concerns with this is would leaving it to Yes help because it will hopefully read the canonical tags on products now) Thank you in advance Michael
Technical SEO | | TogetherCare0 -
Instead of a 301, my client uses a 302 to custom 404
I've found about 900 instances of decommissioned pages being redirected via 302 to a 404 custom page, even when there's a comparable page elsewhere on the site or on a new subdomain. My recommendation would be to always do a 301 from the legacy page to the new page, but since they're are so many instances of this 302->404 it seems to be standard operating procedure by the dev team. Given that at least one of these pages has links coming from 48 root domains, wouldn't it obviously be much better to 301 redirect it to pass along that equity? I don't get why the developers are doing this, and I have to build a strong case about what they're losing with this 302->404 protocol. I'd love to hear your thoughts on WHY the dev team has settled on this solution, in addition to what suffers as a result. I think I know, but would love some more expert input.
Technical SEO | | Jen_Floyd0 -
What is the recommended or "best practice" Permalink Structure?
I have always been under the impression that by connecting pages to their parent pages as described in a.) below is best practice and makes sense to me. a.) yoursite.com/category/sub-category/product/ b.) yoursite.com/product But then i also understand the importance in terms of link juice being spread out across so many sub pages, and by using Example b.) you keep the link juice in tact. Your thoughts on this? Greg
Technical SEO | | AndreVanKets0 -
Does anyone use paid seo tools
Hi, i see a lot of people claiming that paid seo tools work, i would like to know if anyone uses them. I have a new site that i am building and i am wondering if there are any good paid tools out there that could help me gain exposure quicker. I get a lot of emails from well known companies promoting their paid tools but have never bought any as i believe you should hear from people who have tried them first. If you feel there are any good paid seo tools out there for help with rankings and link building then i would love to hear about them
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Would you advise or not to include a sites name at the end of each title tage? Example "Top 3 things to do in New York | yoursite.com"
Having a discussion on if we should include our domain at the end of each site page. Re read over the following pages and question remove the brand to keep under 70 characters? or Shorten the page Title before the brand? Let the title exceed 70 characters? What is your thoughts?
Technical SEO | | Harley2g0 -
Rel="no follow" for All Links on a Site that Charges for Advertising
If I run a site that charges other companies for listing their products, running banner advertisements, white paper downloads, etc. does it make sense to "no follow" all of their links on my site? For example: they receive a profile page, product pages and are allowed to post press releases. Should all of their links on these pages be "no follow"? It seems like a gray area to me because the explicit advertisements will definitely be "no followed" and they are not buying links, but buying exposure. However, I still don't know the common practice for links from other parts of their "package". Thanks
Technical SEO | | zazo0 -
We have a ton of legacy links that include /?ref=tracking-goes-here. We need concile this, can the conical tag be used to fix this? How?
www.firehost.com/?ref=pressrelease example - http://cl.ly/2O1d1x2m3b1b3K1K0h2J
Technical SEO | | FirePowered0