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Number of posts in this thread: 9 (In chronological order)

From: Iza Bartosiewicz
Date: Wed, Sep 28 2011 2:27AM
Subject: Accessibility and SEO
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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 )

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Wed, Sep 28 2011 8:03AM
Subject: Accessibility and iFrames, any special considerations?
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Greetings, listers.

I have been asked about the accessibility of iFrames, and I have to
admit to not knowing much about iFrames really.
I have Googled some keywords but don't find anyting more recent than
2007 or 2008.
Has anyone on here worked with iFrames and run into any particular
accessibility issues or do's and dont's?
Thanks
-Birkir

From: Ryan Hemphill
Date: Wed, Sep 28 2011 8:27AM
Subject: Re: Accessibility and iFrames, any special considerations?
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You should probably note that if a user is using VoiceOver, they would have
to use some special combo (alt+ctrl+shift+down?) instead of it simply being
part of the parent page's doc flow. If you can can figure out how to
elegantly drop the focus into the page upon iframe focus, I would recommend
it.

On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 10:05 AM, Birkir R. Gunnarsson <
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> Greetings, listers.
>
> I have been asked about the accessibility of iFrames, and I have to
> admit to not knowing much about iFrames really.
> I have Googled some keywords but don't find anyting more recent than
> 2007 or 2008.
> Has anyone on here worked with iFrames and run into any particular
> accessibility issues or do's and dont's?
> Thanks
> -Birkir
>

From: Paul J. Adam
Date: Wed, Sep 28 2011 8:39AM
Subject: Re: Accessibility and SEO
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Some of the suggestions in that article are terrible. Of course you need to have proper use of headings! Google recommends this, http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/googles-seo-report-card.html, http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide.html.

ALT text in images makes your site easier to find, whatever you place in the alt text google indexes so if someone searches for text that you have embedded in your images it will show up in their results. I just tested this and it worked.

The authors intent was likely to sell their SEO services. Most of SEO is common sense if you know semantic HTML coding. Write good content, tag it correctly according to web standards and people will find your pages if they search for your content. A lot of this nonsense SEO is voodoo magic.

Just explain to anyone who believes this article word for word that the writer's bottom line is to sell SEO services, not promote web standards or accessibility. The title is what they call linkbait.

Paul J. Adam
Accessibility Evangelist
Deque Systems
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
www.PaulJAdam.com
@pauljadam on Twitter

On Sep 28, 2011, at 4:27 AM, Iza Bartosiewicz wrote:

> 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 )
>

From: Lucy Greco
Date: Wed, Sep 28 2011 10:00AM
Subject: Re: Accessibility and frames, any special considerations?
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It's been a long time but I do remember I have had problems in the pass. Screen readers might not see the frame or if they did they might not get out of it or the worst case was bleed through. I think modern iframs are more useable but it is a training problem to teach the idea.

Lucy Greco
Assistive Technology Specialist
Disabled Student's Program UC Berkeley
(510) 643-7591
http://attlc.berkeley.edu
http://webaccess.berkeley.edu

From: Hoffman, Allen
Date: Wed, Sep 28 2011 12:15PM
Subject: Re: Accessibility and SEO
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The simple fact is that if people are equating accessibility
improvements with increase ranking on search engines may not be true,
and this seems to point that out. they are not the same requirement at
the end of the day, so people should not expect higher rankings for
accessible content, however, to some extent totally nontext information
may be far less searchable than more text intensive data.

From: Paul J. Adam
Date: Wed, Sep 28 2011 12:30PM
Subject: Re: Accessibility and SEO
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I think that accessibility improvements DO actually increase your ranking on search engines if you actually have compelling content worth reading in the first place. Google agrees.

To all extents, totally non-text information is NOT searchable at all, there's no less about it. No text = no indexing.

Paul J. Adam
Accessibility Evangelist
Deque Systems
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
www.PaulJAdam.com
@pauljadam on Twitter

On Sep 28, 2011, at 2:15 PM, Hoffman, Allen wrote:

> The simple fact is that if people are equating accessibility
> improvements with increase ranking on search engines may not be true,
> and this seems to point that out. they are not the same requirement at
> the end of the day, so people should not expect higher rankings for
> accessible content, however, to some extent totally nontext information
> may be far less searchable than more text intensive data.
>
>
>
>

From: Ryan E. Benson
Date: Wed, Sep 28 2011 7:21PM
Subject: Re: Accessibility and SEO
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Paul, I have to agree with Allen. While having a fully compliant
website DOES help boost SEO rankings, it is not a sure fire hit that
your rank will boost. From what I read, having an accessible site does
gets you up to the minimum SEO level, you have to go another step. If
you spit out an accessible site 3-5 years ago, you would score 8 or 9
out of 10, nowadays that is like a 5 or so.

--
Ryan E. Benson



On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 2:29 PM, Paul J. Adam < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> I think that accessibility improvements DO actually increase your ranking on search engines if you actually have compelling content worth reading in the first place. Google agrees.
>
> To all extents, totally non-text information is NOT searchable at all, there's no less about it. No text = no indexing.
>
> Paul J. Adam
> Accessibility Evangelist
> Deque Systems
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> www.PaulJAdam.com
> @pauljadam on Twitter
>
> On Sep 28, 2011, at 2:15 PM, Hoffman, Allen wrote:
>
>> The simple fact is that if people are equating accessibility
>> improvements with increase ranking on search engines may not be true,
>> and this seems to point that out.  they are not the same requirement at
>> the end of the day, so people should not expect higher rankings for
>> accessible content, however, to some extent totally nontext information
>> may be far less searchable than more text intensive data.
>>
>>
>>
>>

From: Paul J. Adam
Date: Wed, Sep 28 2011 8:18PM
Subject: Re: Accessibility and SEO
← Previous message | No next message

Then we agree, it does help boost your SEO. Google says so in their webmaster documentation. Of course it's not a sure fire hit, you can't expect search engines to point to a site with crappy content if you just make it accessible.

The way you get SEO juice is to actually have compelling content that people are out there searching for and then you also need inbound links from popular sites and recently search engines are moving more towards higher rankings for inbound links from social media sites. You need your site to be linked to from where the people are on the internet. Accessibility comes further down the list of ways to improve your SEO, but it does just that. At least according to Google.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/googles-seo-report-card.html
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide.html

Paul J. Adam
Accessibility Evangelist
Deque Systems
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
www.PaulJAdam.com
@pauljadam on Twitter

On Sep 28, 2011, at 9:21 PM, Ryan E. Benson wrote:

> Paul, I have to agree with Allen. While having a fully compliant
> website DOES help boost SEO rankings, it is not a sure fire hit that
> your rank will boost. From what I read, having an accessible site does
> gets you up to the minimum SEO level, you have to go another step. If
> you spit out an accessible site 3-5 years ago, you would score 8 or 9
> out of 10, nowadays that is like a 5 or so.
>
> --
> Ryan E. Benson
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 2:29 PM, Paul J. Adam < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>> I think that accessibility improvements DO actually increase your ranking on search engines if you actually have compelling content worth reading in the first place. Google agrees.
>>
>> To all extents, totally non-text information is NOT searchable at all, there's no less about it. No text = no indexing.
>>
>> Paul J. Adam
>> Accessibility Evangelist
>> Deque Systems
>> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
>> www.PaulJAdam.com
>> @pauljadam on Twitter
>>
>> On Sep 28, 2011, at 2:15 PM, Hoffman, Allen wrote:
>>
>>> The simple fact is that if people are equating accessibility
>>> improvements with increase ranking on search engines may not be true,
>>> and this seems to point that out. they are not the same requirement at
>>> the end of the day, so people should not expect higher rankings for
>>> accessible content, however, to some extent totally nontext information
>>> may be far less searchable than more text intensive data.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>