Entry tags:
Digital Accessibility and SEO Best Practices
from the Paciello Group
Posted on Wednesday, 2 December 2020 by Marissa Sapega
Search engine optimization and web accessibility share many of the same best practices.
This guide will help you better understand the overlap between digital accessibility and SEO best practices.
https://www.paciellogroup.com/digital-accessibility-and-seo-tactics/
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by boosting the visibility of a website or a web page by ranking highly on a web search engine (like Google or Bing). This process may involve improving the presentation of existing content or creating new content on specific topics.
SEO and web accessibility can influence many of the same areas of product development
It may come as a surprise to you that SEO and web accessibility have so much overlap. Yet, considering all the elements/components that comprise complicated digital content like a website, it shouldn’t be all that surprising at all.
Here are a few examples:
• Design – Web designers who don’t understand SEO or digital accessibility are at a significant disadvantage; knowledge of both practices should influence their work. For example, designers should strive to avoid using images of text rather than just employing CSS to render it the way they want it to appear. Just like a screen reader, Google web crawlers cannot interpret an image; they can only “understand” the content of a page by reading the code. This means any text on an image will be invisible to both screen reader users and Google crawlers. Though you could add alternative text to the image, that is not the use for which it was created, and alt text isn’t considered appropriate for this situation.
• User Experience (UX) – UX professionals need to create digital environments that minimize frustration and facilitate task completion. One factor Google considers when ranking websites is the on-page experience—if a website is hard to navigate or confusing to visitors, they’ll leave immediately, sending a negative signal to Google that it was a poor user experience. When building a user experience with accessibility in mind, these professionals create a better experience for everyone, not just those with disabilities.
• Technical infrastructure – The “skeleton” of a website, its code, significantly influences SEO and accessibility. Google crawlers and people with visual impairments using screen readers appreciate how a page is structured (e.g., proper headers and sub-headers) because it helps them understand the content of the page without reading all of it.
• Information Architecture – Similarly to the infrastructure, having a logical information architecture allows crawlers and humans to easily access pages in an order that makes sense benefits both SEO and the usability of a website.
Myths about SEO and accessibility
There is a lot of misinformation out there about both these topics. This guide will help you discover the truth behind some common misconceptions and why it’s important to understand them.
continued at
https://www.paciellogroup.com/digital-accessibility-and-seo-tactics/
Posted on Wednesday, 2 December 2020 by Marissa Sapega
Search engine optimization and web accessibility share many of the same best practices.
This guide will help you better understand the overlap between digital accessibility and SEO best practices.
https://www.paciellogroup.com/digital-accessibility-and-seo-tactics/
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by boosting the visibility of a website or a web page by ranking highly on a web search engine (like Google or Bing). This process may involve improving the presentation of existing content or creating new content on specific topics.
SEO and web accessibility can influence many of the same areas of product development
It may come as a surprise to you that SEO and web accessibility have so much overlap. Yet, considering all the elements/components that comprise complicated digital content like a website, it shouldn’t be all that surprising at all.
Here are a few examples:
• Design – Web designers who don’t understand SEO or digital accessibility are at a significant disadvantage; knowledge of both practices should influence their work. For example, designers should strive to avoid using images of text rather than just employing CSS to render it the way they want it to appear. Just like a screen reader, Google web crawlers cannot interpret an image; they can only “understand” the content of a page by reading the code. This means any text on an image will be invisible to both screen reader users and Google crawlers. Though you could add alternative text to the image, that is not the use for which it was created, and alt text isn’t considered appropriate for this situation.
• User Experience (UX) – UX professionals need to create digital environments that minimize frustration and facilitate task completion. One factor Google considers when ranking websites is the on-page experience—if a website is hard to navigate or confusing to visitors, they’ll leave immediately, sending a negative signal to Google that it was a poor user experience. When building a user experience with accessibility in mind, these professionals create a better experience for everyone, not just those with disabilities.
• Technical infrastructure – The “skeleton” of a website, its code, significantly influences SEO and accessibility. Google crawlers and people with visual impairments using screen readers appreciate how a page is structured (e.g., proper headers and sub-headers) because it helps them understand the content of the page without reading all of it.
• Information Architecture – Similarly to the infrastructure, having a logical information architecture allows crawlers and humans to easily access pages in an order that makes sense benefits both SEO and the usability of a website.
Myths about SEO and accessibility
There is a lot of misinformation out there about both these topics. This guide will help you discover the truth behind some common misconceptions and why it’s important to understand them.
continued at
https://www.paciellogroup.com/digital-accessibility-and-seo-tactics/