POSH : Plain Old Semantic HTML

The Webheads are tossing around a new term today. POSH, an acronym for Plain Old Semantic HTML, was coined on the microformats IRC Channel earlier in the month and it seems to be taking off. The idea of POSH has invigorated the debate about the importance of developing semantic markup - what microformats are built upon. On the surface it looks a little self-serving, but no one can argue the value plain old content can provide to your organic optimization efforts.

The purpose of Microformats (a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards) is to convey as much semantic meaning as possible to content through the use of these common standards - for example, tags. POSH, or the publishing of POSHified content, supports this nicely.

What can you do to be POSH and POSHify your content? For one, make sure your website creates and publishes valid, semantic (X)HTML and uses semantic-class-names accordingly.