Accessibility has become an integral part of web development. It refers to making websites accessible for people with disabilities who may need an assistive device to browse the site and interact with its content. Any Website Accessibility Consultant will tell you that a key to good accessibility is implementing its techniques correctly. It will help you avoid, for example, illogical and confusing descriptions for screen reader users.
Meanwhile, SEO – Search Engine Optimization – is based on improving the site’s usability and content to enhance crawling and users’ experience simultaneously. It covers many elements, from keywords and headings to the speed of a website.
Do they overlap? Short answer: Yes. But let’s take a closer look at what you can do to gain a double benefit from it.
Alt Attributes
Alternative text is one of the most common practices in accessibility as it allows screen readers to decipher images on a page for those with visual impairments. Make sure you create precise descriptions for alt attributes instead of marking them just as “image.”
Search engine bots cannot see images on your website, so adding the alt text helps them see more content, and your technical SEO can benefit from it. It may be very tempting just to put a bunch of targeted keywords there, but you should remember that you write it for people in the first place. To create the perfect alt text, keep it short (about 125 characters), descriptive, avoid keyword stuffing, and write naturally.
Headings
Use headings to bring a hierarchical structure to a web page, making it easy to scan and increase user experience. It makes nesting one topic in another less confusing and more readable, allowing users to focus on interesting points and skip the excessive details for them. Headings help people with visual impairments or cognitive disabilities get a precise impression of a web page, making navigation easier for their assistive devices.
At the same time, a good structure allows your website to aim for featured snippets. When creating content, ensure you do not use more than one H1 heading because it will break the smooth navigation, and use the following headings only to divide content into logical parts in a particular order.
Video Transcripts
Content represented as video becomes a commonly used tendency for providing users with specialized information because it allows explaining anything along with illustrative examples. It may be impossible for people with hearing impairments or foreign language speakers to receive any information this way, so it would be better to provide them with transcripts.
The simplest solution is subtitles – YouTube will even supply your video with automated ones (although they may need some editing). Still, you may want to put some time and effort into creating a text transcription of the whole video to be placed on the same page below. Since search engines are text-based, it will help them understand the video’s content and index it.
Remember not to stuff your captions with keywords hoping that no one except search engine bots will notice them. It may significantly lower the overall user experience for people who rely on screen readers and those who prefer reading to watching. Write an exact transcription of the information contained in the video naturally.
Sitemaps
First of all, sitemaps are useful for quick and easy navigation and provide an overall picture of the site. HTML sitemaps with links to your website’s primary pages allow the user to get direct and immediate access to a page they are interested in the most.
Second of all, sitemaps help search engines find hard-to-reach pages, index your website entirely, and better understand its content. It is crucial to keep your sitemap updated with new licks regularly.
Conclusion
As accessibility impacts a website’s general usability, it affects your SEO, too. It’s that simple. However, using accessibility techniques to stuff your website with “hidden” keywords can be a disastrous mistake.
If you are aiming to improve your SEO by implementing accessibility solutions – it is a good start. But it is essential to remember that you introduce those changes to help people in the first place, not search engines. It is better to add keywords only when they are organic and relevant to your content and focus on conveying the information in as many alternative ways as possible.
Ensure that accessibility techniques you choose are universal and compatible with assistive technologies and do not lower user experience by breaking the site’s structure. Making it work for everyone will always increase your traffic and ranking.
