The “Creating structure using Unordered Lists†article on the MadMouse blog introduces a proof of concept of using lists instead of divisions to write down the structure of a website layout. The article shows how it is it to be done, describes its purpose and points out few advantages of using it. It also presents a WordPress theme that fully utilizes this concept so that you can have a look at it in action. Using this method results in code that is very clean and efficient, optimized, light weight and most importantly code that is well formed which can result in better optimization of the HTML code and lead an SEO advantage!. Click here, to read more about creating structure using Unordered lists. Squeaky....
I heard of someone trying this in the past, perhaps it's where this guy got the idea, but it looks to me like he's just reformulating the DOM. HTML is already in a tree structure set by the DOM. Putting the whole thing in a list is just duplicating effort, in a way. If anything, it would defeat SEO jazz cause now any headings would be on a lower plane, perhaps. So my first thought is it's the work of am amateur.
I understand what you mean by but how does it defeat SEO? <div id="page"> <div id="element"> </div> </div> Code (markup): vs <ul id="page"> <li id="element"> </li> </ul> Code (markup): I don't see the defeat? Please explain?
The more pertinent question would be, "how does using non-semantic markup in a poorly structured document improve SEO?" There is no sane rationale for structuring a document as a list. While a table of contents is a list, the map is not the territory [Korzybski], and the table of contents is not the document. A document may contain a list, but the document is not a list. The proponents of this silliness seem to have a very loose grip on the nuances of structure and semantics; not to mention any sufficiently high level of comfort with the use of css. cheers, gary