What are semantic HTML elements and why should you use them?

Semantic elements describe the meaning of content rather than its look: header, nav, main, article, section, aside, footer, figure, time.

<article>
  <header><h2>Post title</h2></header>
  <p>Content…</p>
  <footer><time datetime="2026-01-15">Jan 15, 2026</time></footer>
</article>

Benefits:

• Accessibility: screen readers expose landmarks so users can jump between regions.
• SEO: crawlers understand page structure better than nested divs.
• Maintainability: the markup documents itself instead of relying on class names.