It is the foundation of good SEO and without it you are doomed to a life of sub-par SERPs. Even if you know everything about SEO, bad semantic markup is enough on its own to kill your rankings. So don’t forget to use it on all your webpages!

Here is a list of some of the most common Semantic tags that you should know:

Heading Tags – <H1>, <H2>, etc.

H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6.

Example: <h1>Our Company</h1> 

Paragraph Tag – <p>

The P tga. Use the P element for paragraphs. Don’t use the element to instead provide paragraph-like breaks.

Example: <p>This is a paragraph of text.</p>

Emphasis Tag – <em>

The EM tag. Use the EM element for emphasis. If you’re after italicized text aside from emphasized text or citations use CSS (font-style:italic) rather than EM or I.

Example: This is <em>important</em>.

Strong Tag – <strong>

The STRONG tag. Use for even stronger emphasis.

Example: This is <strong>even more important</strong>.

Cite Tag – <cite>

The CITE Tag. Contains a citation or a reference to other sources.

Example: <cite>Designing with Web Standards</cite> is an book by Jeff Zeldman.

Blockquote Tag – <blockquote>

The BLOCKQUOTE tag. Don’t use BLOCKQUOTE just for text indenting. If you want to indent text, use CSS margins, padding, or a combination of both. Likewise, if you don’t want to use BLOCKQUOTE because of its block-level characteristics, you can use CSS to change them, too.

Example: <blockquote>This is a paragraph of text I want to indent.</blockquote >

List Tags – <ol>, <ul>, <li>

OL, UL, LI. When you have a list of something, use the list element tags. While there are a few choices of list style types, these can be replaced with images using CSS. It’s also possible to hide bullets completely, change indenting, use lists inline or block, and more.

Example:
<ul>
<li>Red</li>
<li>Blue</li>
<li>Green</li>
</ul>

Definition Tags – <dl>, <dt>, <dd>

DL, DT, DD. Use definition list elements for terms and their corresponding descriptions.
Example:
<dl>
<dt> Absolute link</dt>
<dd> A link which shows the full URL of the page being linked at. Some links only show relative link paths instead of having the entire reference URL within the a href tag.</dd>
<dt> Deep linking</dt>
<dd> Deep linking, on the World Wide Web, is making a hyperlink that points to a specific page or image on another website, instead of that website’s main or home page. Such links are called deep links.</dd>
<dt> Long Tail</dt>
<dd> The word long tail is being used to describe a (niche) longer keyword focus while writing content for search engine optimization.</dd>
</dl>

 Source: SEO Cheat Sheet

Here is a sample of Semantic HTML Markup:

<h1>This is the most important headline</h1>
<p>This is ordinary paragraph text, where certain words and phrases may be <em>emphasized</em> to mark them as
<strong>particularly important</strong>.</p>
<h2>This is a headline of secondary importance to the headline above</h2>
<p>Any time you list related things, the items should be marked up in the form of a list:</p>
<ul>
<li>A list signals that a group of items are conceptually related to each other</li>
<li>Lists may be ordered (numbered or alphabetic) or unordered (bulleted items)</li>
<li>Lists may also be menus or lists of links for navigation </li>
<li>Cascading Style Sheets can make lists look many different ways</li>
</ul>

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1. Graywolf - Always full of information on the search engine optimization and search marketing fields, whitty commentary and in depth articles. You’ll find tons of great insights here.
2. Seobook.com - Leading SEO blog by Aaron Wall covering the search space. It offers marketing tips, search analysis, and whatever random rants come to mind. Focuses on search engines, search engine optimization tips, and search engine news. Lots of great, solid commentary about the world of search engines and SEO, plus excellent archived and current articles. You could spend a lot of time at this blog and not exhaust all it has to offer.
3. Seomoz.org - News, tips and highlights from the search marketing industry. I’ll let this blog speak for itself: “Free, open & content-rich. SEOmoz is a search engine optimization resource created to benefit the entire SEO community. My favorite is whiteboard Fridays. Every tool, service & article provided is absolutely free to all users.” I have quite a few articles from SEOmoz saved permanently in my Bloglines subscriptions.
4. Problogger.net- Great  blog, especially for well… bloggers!
5. Mattcutts.com- Matt Cutts works for Google and is responsible for search engine quality (i.e. getting rid of spam) and for helping web masters with good SEO practices. This one is a must for anyone that wants to master good, solid, SEO practices.
6. Searchengineland.com – It will cover the latest news on search engine marketing and promises to be the single most resourceful tool on search engine marketing. Search Engine Land keeps track of the many developments in the search engine world, providing an insider’s view of what works and what doesn’t as far as search engine optimization.
7. Bluehatseo.com – This blog has a lot of great tips and techniques to help the average webmaster break beyond their barriers. However they are nothing more than skillsets. Skillsets are worthless without direction.
8. Blog.searchenginewatch.com- Blog founded by Danny Sullivan, internet consultant and journalist. It offers many search engines resources and SEO related news. Consistently updated free search engine optimization information, tips, news, and opinions; as well as the latest search engine and directory news and information. I especially appreciate the writing style at Search Engine Watch, which presents somewhat complicated information in a very accessible, non-threatening sort of way; in other words, a succinct lack of techno-speak.
9. Seroundtable.com - purpose behind Search Engine Roundtable is to report on the most interesting threads taking place at the SEM forums.
10. SEOChat.com – Leading SEO blog by Aaron Wall covering the search space. It offers marketing tips, search analysis, and whatever random rants come to mind.

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Aizatto’s Related Posts

Cross-Linker– Set up commonly used words to link to posts or redirects. This plugin can also do wonders for affiliate linking.

Google (XML) Sitemaps– Automatically build and ping multiple sitemap services with an XML file.  Highly configurable and easy to configure.

Meta Robots WordPress plugin – Adds meta tags automatically to posts – great for beginners.

HeadSpace 2– A gigantic plugin that lets you rewrite titles, meta data, and tons of other features important to SEO. HeadSpace2 is an all-in-one meta-data manager that allows you to fine-tune the SEO potential of your site.

SEO Title Tag – Don’t need all the power of Headspace2 try SEO title tag, a simple but effective solution.

SEO Slugs– keeps slugs from becoming too long. Very long slugs can have negative impacts on URL keyword relevancy.

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