Unordered lists are a great way to organize data on your website. Google loves semantics, and its job is to index the world.For a long time I have been focusing on building out websites with SEO in mind, and primarily structuring the sites in such a way that the type of information in each section is organized and flows neatly from page to page.On a recent project, I was setting up a <ul> which contained a list of links to some very important keyword sections of the site. I decided to take advantage of the title=”" attributes in HTML. This provided a much more semantically correct list.Why should a simple <ul title=”"> matter to Google and other search bots? It may be a future post topic, but the number one thing to keep in mind with HTML and SEO is that Google loves semantics.A <ul></ul> is an unordered list. It is a way, to organize your data in your HTML document. Not only is using ul’s a good practice in HTML implementation, but it’s also a good SEO practice too. Remember, quality content structured in a way that makes it easy for Google to organize is “best practice” SEO.<h3>list of reasons to use Lists in your markup</h3><ul title="Reasons why smart SEO markup uses lists"><li>Googlebot loves organization</li><li>Googlebot loves good markup Semantics</li><li>It helps couple like items into groups.</li></ul>Why does adding titles to your UL help SEO ?When Google happens upon a piece of information, it indexes it with what is surrounding that object. This is most evident with Google image indexing. Google often times looks at an h(n) that may be directly above it. It also looks at the surrounding paragraphs.Reason 1 - When Google encounters a group of items, such as 3 items unordered list, it tries to make a connection between them.Reason 2 - By adding a semantical indicator to what type of data is in the UL, you are helping Google set up a framework to index that data, increasing your information exactitude.Nested ULsIf your list is complex, consider nesting UL’s. Here is an example in which I have used nested UL and titles.<ul title="web design and development related services"><li><h3>Web Design</h3><ul title="Web Design Services"><li>Branding</li><li>Layout</li><li>Services</li></ul></li><li><h3>Web Development</h3><ul title="web development services"><li><h4>Front End / Client-side</h4><ul title="front end web development"><li>Javascript</li><li>Ajax</li></ul></li><li><h4>Back End Development</h4><ul title="Backend web development"><li>MySQL</li><li>PHP</li></ul></li></ul></li></ul>Ah, complex but it looks so pretty! Now, imagine those as links instead of plain text (I removed <a/> so that we could fit it into the layout), and you will see how this sort of semantics can help.Will this small change push you to the top of Google?Nope, but by making some of these best practices policy, you are setting yourself up for success - especially in the long run as Google and other search engines get better and better at indexing sites with thorough semantics to return the most relevant results. ——- edit ——–I should mention, that these titles WILL be visible to your user on roll over of the UL. Keep this in mind when you are fitting in different keywords. This is not a place to hide keywords from users to pass to spiders.
3 comments so far.
Interesting post. I’m one to believe the more instances on your page of the Keyword Phrase you’re trying to capture the better. There’s only so much you can do to make your actual ‘content’ include a Keyword Phrase, but on the back end the possibilities are endless by including both alt and title (to name two) tags.
True, but you don’t want to load your keyword density to the point of ridiculousness, nor to you want to do anything that wouldn’t pass manual review (so nothing too spammy). I tend to err on the side of semantics with these kinds of additions - if the title or alt is enhancing the usability and meaning of the content, it is kosher. The side benefit is that you get more keywords
Interesting. I never thought about titles to UL tags. Thanks!