HTML5 Table : Good Practices

HTML5 Table is quite complex topic but in due course of time, we need to use a Table. Here is a guide for creating a well formed, SEO optimized, responsive Table. More you will know, more the Things get complex to realize closest to your expected result. As with HTML5 standard, we need to give importance to many aspects; including the practical fact – to date, none of the known Internet browsers fully support all of the features and codes in HTML5. Now, add the complexity Google Added or Testing including responsive Design, Tap size and position of a webpage etc. For Google, it is quite easy to declare anything as “should be like this” but for a single webmaster, the question of SEO-friendly becomes more complex to answer when we are thinking about website crawling and indexing.

Now, implementing Schema.org tags to HTML5 Table make it more difficult; wrong coding or mixing up various standards could lead to additional code bloat resulting in “spammy appearance” to Google for a hard worked meaningful list of data to human.

HTML5 Table : Case Study

If we do not take an example complex imaginary case, this article on HTML5 Table will be fully meaningless to the user – that is practically written all over the web – Google actually fail to understand; which article is more towards “perfect” (in terms of newer standards used by them) and which are not – other factors, unfortunately plays for SERP. The articles are not HTML5 Table itself but a webpage with lot of text.

You can take an example Table like this to think :

The reader must clarify the following topics before reaching the next paragraph in this article :

1. HTML5 Basics
2. HTML5 Vocabulary and Interfaces
3. Brief Overview of Relevant Recommendations in Semantic Web

HTML5 Table : The Standards

First, divide these elements :

1. HTML is for Structure
2. JavaScript is for Behavior
3. CSS is for Presentation

HTML5 Table : The HTML Part

So, we need to think about the HTML part first.

This is a typical example of a Table in HTML5 :

In the full webpage, we are getting these structural elements of HTML 5 :

1. header
2. section
3. article
4. nav
5. footer

Also some block-level semantic elements :

1. aside
2. figure
3. dialog

The whole Things are nicely written by Jeff :

and the Standards Explained :

Now, for a webpage, we need to check the references from Schema.Org. For our Case Study, the approach should be to create a Table of Things with reference Driver hyperlinked to another webpage within the same domain. On the second webpage, the particular Thing (one Driver) should be described and linked to the external vendor/OEM websites. This, as understandable, can keep the Things more organized. So, we first need to follow the standard of Collection Page (where the Table will be) :

and for individual drivers, an ItemPage :

Other Elements like Authors, should be properly implemented.

HTML5 Table : The JavaScript Part

For keeping it simple, we are not going to describe the other ways to create a Table, for example with PHP and Javascript :

Javascript, we want to use only for control of behavior – like we wrote in our previous guide for WordPress – jQuery ScrollTo and Custom Tables.

In other words, you can omit this part.

HTML5 Table : The CSS Part

This is important as we will want to have a responsive design, like Chris gave example :

There are Table specific CSS like TableCloth :

You can test your Table here :

HTML5 Table : Where to Start From?

You need a good Template for creating a Webpage (one is for Table and another is for the Driver, in our case), for example Bootstrap :

Obviously, you have to manually Edit (like on some software like Coda on Mac or some Adobe Product) like this Example 1 :

On, Google Structured Data Testing Tool, it should perform at least like this (as our website has no good real example of Table)

It is quite obvious, one need to have at least 15% Text and Other Normally Accepted Positive On-Page SEO Factors present. It is, really painful work to work with a HTML5 Table.