Web accessibility meets SEO for a win-win situation

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Thursday, 4 August 2011 12:40pm

Every business is interested in return on investment, so when Jared Smith, Associate Director of WebAIM, blogged earlier this week about web accessibility and SEO there was interest from managers, web professionals and marketers alike.

The benefit of web accessibility practices for improved search engine ranking isn’t new. The W3C-WAI has listed SEO as a financial factor that should feature in a web accessibility business case for your organisation for some time, and a simple Google search will turn up many articles discussing this topic.

Smith’s blog nicely summarises the web accessibility and SEO best practices that overlap such as alternative text for images, using proper heading structures and providing descriptive links. He also touches on new technologies, such as HTML5 and WAI-ARIA that provide improved semantic meaning will also affect SEO.

Yet the most compelling line in his article is this - web accessibility and SEO are both about getting relevant content to users. Web accessibility enables people with disabilities to access online media while SEO allows all people, irrespective of ability to find the content they are looking for.

It’s a win-win for everyone.


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