Semantic HTML sections: Crawl Audit check 20

Short answer: check 20 counts the HTML elements that say what part of the page something is: <main>, <article>, <section>, <aside>, <nav> and <figure>. Three or more passes. These elements help any tool that has to find the main content of a page and skip the menu and the footer. Google itself says it rarely depends on them, so this is a low-priority check: worth fixing when you're in the template anyway.

What Crawl Audit checks

Crawl Audit counts every article, section, aside, main, nav and figure element on the page.

• Pass: three or more.
• Warning: fewer than three.

Crawl Audit's own tools use this: to find a page's main text for other checks, it looks in <main> first, then <article>, and strips out header, nav, footer and aside. A page built only from <div>s gives it nothing to go on.

What each element means

From MDN:

• <main> "represents the dominant content of the <body> of a document." One per page.
• <article> "represents a self-contained composition in a document, page, application, or site, which is intended to be independently distributable or reusable." A blog post, a product card or a review.
• <section> "represents a generic standalone section of a document". MDN adds: "Sections should always have a heading, with very few exceptions."
• <aside> "represents a portion of a document whose content is only indirectly related to the document's main content." Sidebars and pull quotes.

What Google says

Google is candid about this. Its SEO Starter Guide says "Google Search can rarely depend on semantic meanings hidden in the HTML specification", and its guidance on AI features says semantic HTML is not required, because "the web in general is not valid HTML, and Google can understand it".

So don't rebuild a working site for this check. Use the right elements in new templates, and fix the obvious one if it's missing: wrap the main content in <main>.

How to check and fix it

• Check: view your page source (Ctrl+U) and search for <main. Most modern themes on WordPress, Shopify, Wix and Squarespace already output <main>, <nav> and <footer>.
• Next.js: put <main> in your root layout around the page content, and use <section> with a heading for each part of long pages.

Sources

• MDN, <main>, <article>, <section> and <aside>, checked 3 October 2026.
• Google Search Central, SEO Starter Guide and guidance on AI features.