SEO and Accessibility How they work together

1. SEO and AccessibilityHow they work together Christine Laikind – Founder, SCS Digital Marketing Advocacy Speaker on Web Accessibility www.scs-digitalmarketing.com | www.christinelaikind.com

2. Web Accessibility • What does it mean • In short: it is making the website inclusive and accessible to everyone – including to those who have disabilities.

3. Why It is Important • 25% of adults* in the US have some sort of disability – demographic that you are ignoring and leaving money or opportunities behind. • ADA lawsuits on the rise. Small businesses are affected. It is not just large companies that are getting sued. *301 million people are adults in USA. Estimated 52 million adults have some sort of disability.

4. Inclusion • It is the right thing to do. Web Accessibility means equal access for everyone – including those who have disability.

5. Address the myths • It cost too much (to do the ”stuff” to make web accessible) • There’s really no benefit or ROI (to make web accessible) • It will interfere with functionality and design (of my website to make it web accessible)

6. Reality • There is really no extra cost – it needs to become part of the design process, not an after thought. • There is a benefit and ROI= increased rankings, new demographics, additional revenue from an optimized site. • An optimized site is actually a well designed website with good user experience.

7. FACT: websites that take web accessibility seriously consistently rank higher than their competition on Google and YouTube. • Why? Because Search engine optimization (SEO) best practices and following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) actually overlap!

8. Web Accessibility • To understand Web Accessibility – first, understand how the web is being used by those who have a disability: • Assistive Devices • Keyboard • Screen Readers • Captioning or Transcripts And lastly – how you design the website also has an effect on web accessibility.

9. Web Accessibility Web accessibility can help improve your SEO by keeping your website’s interface cleaner, easier to navigate, and improving the bounce rate among other benefits.

10. Web Accessibility and Your Market • Web Accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the web. • How they “experience” it may be different, but they still have the right to access or experience the “content” you are delivering.

11. Every Day People • Three types of disabilities: • Permanent: blind, deaf, and so on • Episodic: example of this would be epilepsy, mental illness, migraines, pstd • Conditional or Situational: example can be slow internet connection or broken leg or arm, dyslexic, color blindness

12. CONTENT is KING in both accessibility and SEO. • SEO and UX equals success, right? Web Accessibility and UX equals SEO and that equals Success.

13. How Does Web Accessibility Improve SEO? • Let’s count the ways: • SEO BEST PRACTICES and WEB ACCESSIBILITY that are in close alignment • Mobile Friendly • Strong Site Architecture • Using Proper Alternative Text for Images • Easy to Use Navigation (clear and consistent) • Providing Descriptive Link Text • Ensuring Page Titles are descriptive yet succinct • Providing transcripts and captions for video and audio • Providing useful links to relevant and related resources

14. SEO Best Practices: Users Come First • Quality of Content: • make sure the content focuses on visitor needs, • Don’t worry too much about keywords here • Long form (minimum of 500 words, 1900 words) • If you use video, which is popular, make sure it is captioned and transcribed. (Closed Captions are text files that are searchable and increase engagement)

15. SEO Best Practices: Users come first • Strong Site Architecture • Means Flat Architecture • Users and crawlers can reach any page on website in 4 clicks or less • Make your hierarchy logical. • Each main category should be unique and distinct • Subcategory relate to the main category • Keep the number of main category between two and seven • Balance the subcategories within each category, keep it even

16. SEO Best Practices: Users Come First • User Experience • Easy Navigable Website: • Relevant Internal Linking • Related Content • Use Proper Heading – they create logical hierarchy, organize thoughts. • Site Speed is Quick – website download fairly quickly • Calls to Action – it should clearly state what the visitor should get when they click. While each page may have one primary goal, not every visitor will be ready to convert, provide a secondary goal to keep the visitor engaged.

17. SEO Best Practices: Users Come First • User Experience • Use Proper Heading – they create logical hierarchy, organize thoughts. • If possible, Use only one H1 per page, per good design and accessibility practices • Other headers, such as h2-h6 should be used to organize the rest of your webpage so site visitors can easily scan content and understand each session is about. • Screen Readers will be able to accurately portray the website if done this way • H1 • H2 • H3 • H1 • H2 • H2

18. SEO Best Practices: Users Come First • Relevant Internal Links • Internal Links is one that points to another page on the same website. • Use descriptive keywords in anchor text that gives a sense of topic or keywords the course page is trying to target. • SEO best practice: it is useful for establishing site architecture and spreading link equity. • Best Practices: • Content Links- make sure it is relevant, not broken, one click away • Call to Action Links – keep it above the fold. Present on each page

19. SEO Best Practices: Users Come First • Descriptive Link • Click here is not descriptive link, neither is: Read more • SEO Friendly is: • Succinct • Relevant to the linked to page • Low Keyword density • Not generic • Best Practices: • Subscribe to our newsletter • Download the manual as PDF • Contact Us for more information

20. SEO Best Practices: Mobile Friendly • Easy to Use Navigation • Buttons and Links • Size (screen and font size) • Cross Device Compatibility (smart phone, tablets, desktop) • https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/mobile-website-design-examples

21. SEO Best Pratices: Mobile Friendly • Shutterfly • Evernote • Zappos

22. SEO Best Practices: Alt-Tags • Good on-page SEO practices • Use Alt-tags for all of your images – improves your accessibility and USER EXPERIENCE • Alt tags on all image will also provide greater relevance to search engines • It is a lazy and bad habit to be uploading images like: “img001.jpg.”

23. SEO Best Practices: Alt-Tags • Why It’s Important? • Accessibility • Alt text is a tenet of accessible web design. Its original (and still primary) purpose is to describe images to visitors who are unable to see them. This includes screen readers and browsers that block images, but it also includes users who are sight-impaired or otherwise unable to visually identify an image.

24. SEO Best Practices: Alt-Tags • Why It’s Important? • Image SEO • alt text offers you another opportunity to include your target keyword. With on-page keyword usage still pulling weight as a search engine ranking factor, it's in your best interest to create alt text that both describes the image and, if possible, includes a keyword or keyword phrase you're targeting

25. Good Alt-tags: Keep Users In Mind • Describe the image as specifically as possible. Alt text is, first and foremost, designed to provide text explanations of images for users who are unable to see them. • Keep it (relatively) short. The most popular screen readers cut off alt text at around 125 characters. • Use your keywords. Alt text provides you another opportunity to include your target keyword on a page, and thus another opportunity to signal to search engines that your page is highly relevant to a particular search query. While your first priority should be describing and providing context to the image, if it makes sense to do so, include your keyword in the alt text of at least one image on the page.

26. Good Alt-tags

28. Video and Audio Files • Closed Captions and Transcripts • Provide them for your videos and podcasts • Text transcript will make it easier for Google and other search engines to index the content • It will help your Google ranking • Not only benefits the deaf, think about temporary or situational “disability”

29. SEO Best Practices • How Transcripts Help Boost SEO • Google Crawlers can’t hear audio. Transcripts TELL them what your podcast is about so they (crawlers) can index and rank accordingly. • Examples: • https://www.thisamericanlife.org/317/transcript • https://storycorps.org/stories/amy-sherald-and-elise-pepple/ • http://freakonomics.com/podcast/creativity-5/

30. Quick Intro – Christine Laikind • Digital Marketing Agency for Speakers, Coaches and Trainers • Advocacy Speaker on Web Accessibility • Born deaf due to genetic defect • Do know ASL, but don’t use it • I depend on lip reading to understand others and use various technology to conduct business or do what everyone else does.

31. Copy of this presentation • https://www.scs-digitalmarketing.com/events/ • Download SEO Best Practices Checklist (PDF) on the website