#SEOisAEO: Episode 5 - Semantic HTML5, IA and Accessibility: So Many Missed Opportunities - Jason Barnard with Jono Alderson, Kim Krause Berg & Simon Cox
Published by: Semrush. Host: Jason Barnard. Guests: Jono Alderson, Kim Krause Berg, Simon Cox. October 02, 2018
Most developers who moved from table-based layouts to CSS-based layouts solved the visual problem and stopped there. They replaced tables with <div> elements, controlled presentation through CSS classes, and produced pages that looked exactly as intended in a browser - but whose underlying structure often communicated very little meaning to a machine.
Semantic HTML5 exists to close that gap.
That was one of the central ideas explored in Episode 5 of the #SEOisAEO series, where Jono Alderson, Kim Krause Berg, and Simon Cox joined Jason Barnard to examine a layer of the answer-engine problem that many AEO discussions overlooked: before structured data, before Knowledge Graph signals, and before credibility can influence a recommendation, the machine has to be able to access and interpret the page.
If the HTML structure does not communicate what each piece of content represents, the machine has to work harder to determine its meaning.
Semantic HTML5: Giving Machines Meaningful Structure
The argument Jono Alderson brought to the discussion was that semantic HTML provides an important foundation for everything that follows.
An <article> element can communicate that a section represents a standalone piece of content. An <aside> can identify supplementary information. A <nav> can distinguish navigation from the main content, while <main> identifies the primary content area.
None of this is particularly complicated.
But the underlying principle is important: the structure of a webpage can communicate meaning, not just presentation.
For humans, visual design often provides enough context. We can look at a page and understand which area is the navigation, which is the article, and which information is secondary.
Machines do not necessarily have that same visual context.
Semantic HTML provides explicit structural clues that help them interpret the page.
And for an answer engine, that distinction matters.
Accessibility and AEO: A Shared Challenge
Kim Krause Berg brought the accessibility dimension into the conversation.
This matters for AEO because accessibility and machine understanding share an important requirement: information needs to be structured so that it can be understood without relying entirely on visual presentation.
A screen reader, for example, benefits from a clear heading hierarchy, descriptive links, meaningful labels, and a logical structure.
Those same principles can make a webpage easier for machines to interpret.
That does not mean accessibility exists for SEO. Its primary purpose is to make digital information usable and accessible to people with different needs.
But it does reveal an important overlap.
Accessibility and AEO are not completely separate disciplines that happen to intersect. Both benefit from information being structured clearly enough to be understood beyond visual context.
That becomes even more important in an answer-engine environment, where information may be delivered through different interfaces, devices, and modes of interaction.
Information Architecture: Structure Beyond the Page
Simon Cox brought the discussion from individual webpages to the wider structure of a website through Information Architecture (IA).
The question is no longer simply whether one page is structured clearly.
It is also:
How is all of the information on the website organised and related?
A website’s information architecture can communicate how subjects are categorised, how concepts relate to one another, and which areas of knowledge belong together.
That makes IA particularly relevant to an entity-based search environment.
A coherent, consistent structure gives a machine more context about the subject matter of the site and the relationships between its content.
A fragmented structure does the opposite.
If related information is scattered across disconnected sections, terminology is inconsistent, and the hierarchy is unclear, the machine has a harder job building a coherent understanding of what the brand represents.
The Technical Foundations Are AEO Work
This is where Episode 5 makes an important contribution to the wider #SEOisAEO argument.
Semantic HTML5, accessibility, and information architecture might initially appear to be technical or UX concerns that need to be addressed before the “real” AEO work begins.
The episode challenges that separation.
They are part of the AEO work.
An answer engine cannot confidently understand information that is poorly structured.
It cannot easily determine relationships that a website fails to communicate clearly.
And it cannot deliver information effectively across different environments if that information depends entirely on visual presentation.
This is why the episode’s focus on these seemingly basic foundations is so important.
The sophisticated AEO strategies come later.
First, make the information understandable.
Published by: Semrush
Series: #SEOisAEO
Episode: 5
Host: Jason Barnard
Guests: ono Alderson, Kim Krause Berg, Simon Cox.
Original webinar date: October 2, 2018
Topic: Semantic HTML5, Information Architecture, Accessibility, Position 0, Knowledge Graphs, Schema Markup, and Answer Engine Optimization
Presentation deck: Semantic HTML5, IA and Accessibility: So Many Missed Opportunities
