WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Accessibility and SEO

for

From: Iza Bartosiewicz
Date: Sep 28, 2011 2:27AM


Hi everyone,

I've stumbled upon an interesting discussion sparked by the article on 16 SEO Tactics That Will NOT Bring Targeted Google Visitors [1]. It certainly is an eye-opening article, but - like many others that commented on it - I feel that it could potentially damage the argument that accessibility is good for SEO.
For example, tactic number 4 concerning header tags states that:

"(...) While it's always a good idea to have great headlines on a site that may or may not use a keyword phrase, whether it's wrapped in H-whatever tags is of no consequence to your rankings."

Number 5 is about alt text and, although the alt text for linked images gets the tick, alt text for non-linked images 'in most cases' doesn't.

I don't believe that the author's intention was to imply that we shouldn't bother with accessibility or semantic markup, so it's unfortunate that it could (and will) be interpreted that way by some folks, because of the way she chose to present her arguments. :-(

Hopefully, everyone who reads it will take the time to scan the comments too, and there are many that defend accessibility. This is a clear sign that the message is getting through! :-)

cheers
Iza

[1] http://www.highrankings.com/useless-seo-tactics-303


----
Iza Bartosiewicz
www.linkedin.com/in/izabartosiewicz
twitter.com/mr0wka18 ( http://www.twitter.com/mr0wka18 )