A recently-released report from the Gartner research company lists technologies they believe will have the greatest impact on business over the next ten years. Among those technologies listed is the use of semantic markup "to reduce the costs and improve the quality of Web content management, information access, system interoperability, database integration and data quality."
Semantic markup involves labeling information according to what it is instead of how it will be used or what it should look like. Semantic markup can also be considered descriptive markup in that it describes the thing it's referencing.
As pointed out by Gartner, content management systems that use semantic markup, such as the Agency Fusion Content Management System, are of a higher quality.
Why do you care? Your clients' websites will benefit greatly if you build them using semantic markup. Here are a few ways they'll benefit:
- Search engine rankings
- Accessibility by those with disabilities
- Improved performance on mobile devices like phones or PDAs
- Easier updates to the appearance of the site
- Faster page load times