[author: Noreen Fishman]
Website accessibility is as important as seo, but it is often treated as an afterthought. The fact is that website structure and accommodations are integral parts of search engine optimization that help all visitors find your content. Without this, you’re essentially ignoring people with certain disabilities, which not only hurts your visitors, but also your search engine signals. Why is digital accessibility so important? In this post, we cover everything you need to know about website compliance Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
What is web accessibility?
In simple terms, site accessibility means that everyone can access and use your website, including people with diverse abilities. It involves ensuring that all users can perceive, understand, navigate and interact with a website. Things like permanent hearing, physical, cognitive, neurological and visual impairments are taken into account, as well as temporary impairments like recovery from surgery. Disabilities such as situational impairments are also included. These are scenarios such as a limited Internet connection or movement, or environmental deficiencies such as the inability to play loud audio.
Website compliance is not only monitored by the ADA, but also contributes to various rating factors as well as the overall user experience.
Why is website accessibility important?
The goal of website compliance is to provide equal access to web content for users with disabilities. These efforts not only improve the overall health and performance of a website, but also ensure that businesses are ADA compliant. So digital accessibility is something that you need include, but also offers other advantages. Accessible websites:
They are more likely to appear in search results because search engine crawlers can index them more easily
Provide a better user experience that results in improvement participation rates
They are more likely to be recommended to other contacts or followers
It shows simple navigation where people can find the information that’s valuable to them faster
Ensure regulatory compliance and reduce potential legal implications or consequences of inaccessible websites
Accessibility and optimization for search engines
While SEO tactics focus on ensuring search engine accessibility for websites, SEO can also be affected by various elements of accessibility. Specifically, these are some of the components that also affect website accessibility.
Accurate Page Titles – This section primarily reflects the content of your website to the visitor, but they also describe the web page and are the main way search engines know what’s on the page. Also, these titles explain your content Google so they can make sure it matches user intent and needs, while providing clear direction for users to navigate.
Heading tag structure: They do not play a direct role in ranking factors, but are essential for screen navigation with the help of assistive technologies for people with disabilities. Header tags are generally reserved for web page content management systems to create visually focused page layouts as well.
Search Engine Crawlers: The H1 tag measures the weight of content in SEO and produces headlines that are keyword rich and descriptive Header tags, which provide an overview of the main page’s content to search engine crawlers, further define the structure of the page. Assistive technology uses the help of headings to navigate through pages and jump to different sections of content, so they are very important for accessibility and also for SEO.
Sitemaps – Sitemaps have always been important to SEO, but they are also improve accessibility. By providing an overview and transparent access to important pages and content on the site, crawlers can use sitemaps to find links to other pages on the site.
Link anchor text: This copy is the content on the linked page that helps users decide whether to click the link on the next page. Both screen readers and search engine crawlers use anchor text to understand the content of the landing page. Targeted URL topics and keyword-rich anchor text help web crawlers better understand your content, and having a concise and clear message helps all users navigate web pages better.
Path Links: Allow visitors to crawl and return to the page they are on and show the structure of the site to screen readers and search engine crawlers. These links also play an important role in improving a site internal link, especially for large websites with more intensive navigation structures. However, there are a few things to keep in mind for greater accessibility; such as placing them in the same place consistently throughout the site and making them descriptive enough for screen readers to skim past.
Video Transcripts – Based on Web accessibility guidelines, websites must provide video transcripts for all of their videos. In this way, blind and deaf users can watch the video in real time without unnecessary interruptions. Also, video transcripts add subtitles that will improve search engine efforts.
Alt Text: Image alt text displays text alternatives to those with visual impairments, and is considered by many developers to be the most common intersection between accessibility and SEO. When screen readers read alt text out loud, it needs to be relevant and to the point, not just keyword stuffing. Search engines can do a much better job of detecting keyword stuffing now, and computer vision can identify an image and automatically create the applicable alt text. Additionally, accurate alt text helps search engines better understand images and how to crawl them. In general, alt text helps display images and information in a more interactive way while helping search engines better understand your site.
Take away:
One of the most important things to understand when it comes to website accessibility is that it is not only necessary, but valuable. While accessibility isn’t a direct ranking factor for search engines, these tactics work hand in hand with SEO. In many ways, accessibility helps crawlers and search engine algorithms understand website content, which will increase visibility and discoverability. Therefore, website accessibility is necessary for effective SEO.
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