WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: accessibility and SEO

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From: Linda Ferguson
Date: Jun 5, 2016 12:24PM

Jennifer,

I too have been following the articles on mox by Laura Lippay. Thanks for
posting them here.

I am a consultant in both areas. I find it a struggle to get many in the
SEO field to understand the importance of considering accessibility. They
want to know how making a site accessible can improve user engagement and
ROI. But it's often difficult to prove that accessibility efforts boost
user engagement metrics. So many other things can have an influence
(marketing campaigns, technical SEO updates, etc.). Even when I give them
the business case that they can increase their audience by ~20% by making a
site accessible, that doesn't seem to be enough to convince many folks.
I've also pointed a few folks in the direction of the recent WAI business
case publication (https://www.w3.org/WAI/bcase/).

Mallory, I can understand your bad experiences with SEOs. There are a lot
of sub-par companies out there. Fortunately, SEO is no longer about keyword
stuffing or other black hat techniques. The changes in the Google algorithm
over the past few years means that Google rewards sites that use SEO best
practices and penalizes sites who try to game the system. The best SEOs
know that it is all about relevant, usable, engaging, and accessible
content.

The comments on Laura's posts show a lot of enthusiasm about learning more
about accessibility. Progress - yeah! In the meantime, I'm doing my best to
do one-on-one evangelizing. If anyone has any business case ideas (other
than what's outlined in the WAI piece) that might influence SEO folks, I'd
love to hear them.

-Linda