Update in Sep, 2023: latest HTML5 version

• Nothing is wrong with placing a div inside a tag. In fact, you can place just about anything inside a tag as long as they are categorized as transparent, except that no descendant may be interactive content (eg: buttons or inputs) or an a element, and no descendant may have a specified tabindex attribute.Please refer to these documentations:
  • https://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-html5-20110525/text-level-semantics.html#the-a-element
  • https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/a#properties.
• If you inspect Angular Material official website, one of the leading UI component libraries, you can tell that they are indeed using div inside a element.

This is an example I took from their website:

<a href="/components/badge"><div class="mat-list-item-content"><div mat-ripple="" class="mat-ripple mat-list-item-ripple"></div><div class="mat-list-text"></div></div></a>