Low Semantic HTML

What This Means

The page uses very few HTML5 semantic structural elements relative to its total element count. The markup relies primarily on generic <div> and <span> containers rather than elements that describe their content's role.

Why It Matters for SEO

Semantic HTML5 elements — <article>, <section>, <nav>, <aside>, <main>, <header>, <footer> — communicate the role of each portion of the page to search engines and accessibility tools. When a crawler encounters <main>, it knows that is the primary content area; <nav> signals navigation that is not main content; <aside> signals supplementary content.

Without these signals, engines must infer structure from content patterns alone — a harder problem that introduces more uncertainty. A page built entirely from <div>s gives the crawler no structural vocabulary to work with.

What the Platform Checks

The platform counts the usage of semantic HTML5 structural elements in the document relative to the total element count. Fires when the proportion of semantic elements falls below the minimum threshold.

How to Fix It

Refactor the page markup to use appropriate semantic elements:

• Wrap the primary page content in <main> (only one per page).
• Use <article> for self-contained content like blog posts, news articles, or product descriptions.
• Use <nav> for navigation menus and link collections.
• Use <aside> for sidebars, related posts, and supplementary information.
• Use <header> and <footer> for site-wide and section-level header/footer areas.
• Use <section> for distinct thematic sections within the main content.

This is also a meaningful accessibility improvement — screen readers use semantic elements to provide navigation shortcuts (e.g., "jump to main content"). The SEO and accessibility improvements reinforce each other.