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How to add semantic landmark elements (<header>, <nav>, <main>, <footer>)

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AI Search Score checks for HTML landmark elements — <header>, <nav>, <main>, <footer>. They define the major regions of your page.

Why this matters

Landmarks are the map of your page for any machine reading it — AI agents, screen readers, search crawlers. They say “navigation is here, the main content is here, the footer is here.” Without them, everything is an undifferentiated blur of <div>s and the machine has to guess.

How to fix it

Landmarks are usually the theme’s responsibility, and any well-built theme provides them. If they’re missing:

  • Ensure your theme wraps the header in <header>, the menu in <nav>, the primary content in <main>, and the footer in <footer>.
  • If you’re comfortable editing theme templates, replace generic <div class="header"> with the matching semantic element.
  • If your theme doesn’t provide them and you can’t edit it, consider a theme that does — this is foundational and hard to retrofit from content alone.

How to check it worked

Re-scan. “Core landmark elements” should turn green. View source and confirm each of <header>, <nav>, <main>, <footer> appears.

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