8 Ways Making Your Site Accessible Improves SEO

8 Ways Making Your Site Accessible Improves SEO

While there are many conversations around the importance of (and necessity to be) ADA compliant when it comes to your business’ website, the overlap between accessibility and SEO often gets overlooked. It makes complete sense, however, that the two are related in undeniable ways. As a marketer, you may be challenged to develop a well-rounded and fully-backed argument before taking on website enhancement or redesign projects. With that in mind, we’ve put together eight areas of accessibility that also can affect SEO – read on below, and let us know how we can help get you compliant by filling out this form!

1. Description text

Those who are blind or have poor vision use screen readers to read a webpage out load. Description text for images and media make the job of the screen readers easier. This same text also gives search engines more content to crawl.

2. Video Transcripts

Any time you add video, making the page accessible also involves adding a transcript. Again, this helps screen readers, and puts more content on a page – a search engine crawler’s dream.

3. True Text

True text – or actual text (not image-based) – makes a webpage more readable, usable and yet again, provides more crawlable content. Do NOT neglect image alt text, and stay away from slowing down page load times by cramming too many images onto a page. A slow page load time is now taken into consideration by Google, and can negatively impact SEO.

4. Descriptive Page Headers

Headers should never be neglected on a page, and this includes H1, H2 and H3! By indicating the headings and subheadings within a piece of content, (H1 as the page title, H2 as the header and H3 as a sub-header), you help screen readers and search engines have a better grasp of the content of your website.

5. Vague Links

Vague links/anchor text for hyperlinks (think “learn more” or “read more”) are not helpful for screen readers. Thus, more descriptive language in links can give users a clearer understanding of the link’s content. Also, you guessed it – it helps search engine crawlers!

6. Keyboard Functionality

Keyboard users need to be able to access keyboard functionality on your site if they’re going to stay on your website. This is also impactful for Google, considering the time a visitor spends on your page is considered by the search engine.

7. Hidden Text

Text present on a website that is only visible to search engine spiders and not visitors is hidden text – and not necessarily a thing to be shunned or feared on your site. Google penalizes sites that do so maliciously, but those that use the text for screen readers are ranked higher for accessibility.

8. Page Titles

Your page titles need to be spot on, hands down. When a screen reader lands on your page, the page title is the first thing they hear and allows for a quicker content skim. These page titles also affect SEO, as proper heading structure and use can search engine crawlers better navigate your post.