In early 2023, a study conducted by Accessibilitychecker.org, BuiltWith, and SEMrush, found that better website accessibility correlates to better online discoverability.\xa0 For 850 domains studied, 73% of websites showed an increase in organic traffic after a11y optimizations. And 66% of those websites increased their organic traffic by over 50%.
SEO tactics and website improvements that contribute to success in the rankings are rewarded by the algorithm for a reason. The enhanced SERP results garnered through SEO tactics like schema markup implementation might improve your click-through rates, but they were created by Google because they help users find the exact information they’re looking for. Ultimately, search engine algorithms are designed, and constantly updated, with an eye toward serving the end-user well.\xa0
For SEOs taking a more holistic view of their work and prioritizing optimizations for their end-users (in line with search engines’ own aims), it’s worth recognizing that accessibility improvements can have wide-reaching user experience benefits.\xa0
Robust web development just meant that content needed to be created to account for all the current and future technologies that exist in our browsing experience —\xa0in how we access the web. SEOs, designers, and developers alike needed to embrace responsive design best practices to align their content with how users access the web.\xa0\xa0
In it, Microsoft notes:
73% of websites studied showed an increase in organic traffic after accessibility optimizations.
A brief introduction to website accessibility for SEOs
Looking back, maybe what I should have been thinking at the time was how I needed to include comprehensive descriptions for my YouTube videos and in image alt text to benefit more users.
WCAG’s “Operable” Principle + SEO Strategy
It wasn’t until I researched more about accessibility standards that I understood how cumbersome tabbing through what seems to be a never-ending number of navigational links could be for an impaired user.
My first SEO manager, Jey, always advised me to look at earlier technology patents to understand the directions in which a product or platform was evolving. As a voracious reader, Jey picked up the SEO trade in part by diving into early industry documentation like patents and performing code testing of his own. He understood and embraced what he saw as one of search engines’ primary goals: to make the internet accessible for as many humans as possible. This mission held personal meaning for Jey, as he was diagnosed with partial hearing loss at an early age. Watching him at the office, I also began to understand how frustrating it must be to have to put your earpiece in for all the unexpected client calls, or to have to ask colleagues to repeat themselves during a meeting. If search engines want to provide more value for more users around the world, providing higher rankings for accessible sites that help users like Jey navigate the web makes perfect sense.\xa0
“I could imagine the work we’ve done around Core Web Vitals, and the page experience ranking factor, where it could be that at one point we can quantify accessibility a little bit more, and maybe at that point we can use that when it comes to ranking…”
How does the operability principle of website accessibility relate to SEO?\xa0
In the same SEO office hours session, Mueller also acknowledged the importance of accessibility and doesn’t rule out the possibility of it becoming a direct ranking factor in the future, once Google can better quantify accessibility best practices in its algorithm:
WCAG’s “Robust” Principle + SEO Strategy
The more I learn about digital accessibility, the more my enthusiasm for this growing space grows. I’ve been looking into website accessibility a lot lately —\xa0both in research for this article and in my professional role as Lumar has just launched new website accessibility metrics and reports within our platform. Thinking back to my early days as an SEO, and to my manager Jey who introduced me to the importance of a11y considerations, the writing was on the wall: the need for digital accessibility has always grown in tandem with the development of new technologies. And as the suite of available tools for conducting website accessibility audits and optimizing our digital properties for all users grows, there’s really no time like the present to get to work creating a better, more inclusive online environment for everyone.\xa0
Optimizing for the user vs. optimizing for the algorithm
General goodwill and a sense of ethical responsibility should be the prime motivator for organizations to address the many types of impairments, both temporary and long-term, that drive users to access their content in alternative ways, but we also know that doing things purely out of the goodness of hearts is not what moves the business world. What drives the business world is business — if mitigating legal risks and reaching a wider pool of customers is what moves organizations to take action on digital accessibility, we, as website professionals, can use those motivations to our advantage in building a case for web accessibility initiatives. After all, SEOs have KPIs and goals to hit around site traffic and engagement as well. And accessibility optimizations can help us meet those goals.\xa0
But today, many website managers, developers, SEOs, and digital marketers look at a11y considerations as just an afterthought. It shouldn’t be. And businesses are realizing the importance of accessibility with increasing velocity, as lawsuits related to accessibility failures are on the rise.\xa0
The link text is more descriptive, sure, and that can help inform the search bots that are crawling to index and rank our website content appropriately. But now think about how much better the screen reader experience is with more descriptive anchor text.\xa0\xa0
Well, as SEOs, we spend a significant amount of time ensuring our content is wrapped in the appropriate element tags. In SEO, we learn those optimized tags need to be present so both users and bots can equally understand the page content. Link text is a rudimentary example of this. Anchor text featuring “click here” or “learn more” was also frowned upon compared to more descriptive options like, “click here for more information about duck migration patterns” or “learn more about Chat GPT best practices for technical SEOs.”\xa0
There are now known SEO, engagement, and conversion opportunities to be won by improving user experience elements as outlined in Core Web Vitals, but keeping the user and the various ways they engage with the internet at the forefront of your optimization efforts can keep your site ahead of the curve for what comes next.\xa0
When it comes to WCAG’s “Robust” pillar, SEOs have been optimizing in this area ever since mobile searches overtook desktop searches back in 2015. While mobile SEO took the primary focus during this period, the overarching theme that web marketers had to understand was that internet users access content in a variety of experiences – different size screens, voice searches while on the go, in dedicated web applications, etc.\xa0
Even the more recent focus on Google’s Core Web Vitals takes this into account. We’re all aware that user experience is important and that all website professionals need to optimize this area of their site’s health. But UX aspects like page load time have an added impact on visually impaired users, as screen readers cannot begin to perform their core functions until the page has fully loaded.
“While users with disabilities as well as the aging population are likely to have the most extreme demands, there are many other users that would benefit from improvements in accessibility options because of the various factors that can produce temporary or situational disabilities.”
But this isn’t new news —\xa0it’s what we should have known all along. SEOs didn’t need to comb through years of old technology patents to try and predict whether or not accessibility is part of a strong SEO strategy —\xa0digital accessibility has been a rising topic for decades. Way back in 1988, we had the Technology-Related Assistance Act. And in the 1990s, the Americans With Disabilities Act was introduced, which today includes guidance for website accessibility. Just a few short years later, the first widely available search engines launched, into a landscape where accessibility was already a widening consideration for governments and businesses alike. Search engine technology and web accessibility standards have matured in tandem.\xa0
When I began my SEO journey in 2008, I didn’t know much. Pretty much every search-related blog post I read in the early days referenced recommendations from the then-head of Google search quality, Matt Cutts; one of Google’s earliest hires.\xa0 But the discourse among SEO practitioners was split. Some wholeheartedly accepted the messaging they received from the public figures employed by Big Search. Others insisted that the Google-sanctioned advice couldn’t be trusted, or was designed to throw SEOs off of their algorithms, and continued to keyword-stuff within title tags, image filenames, alt tags — you name it.
WCAG’s “Understandable” Principle + SEO Strategy
On-demand webinar: “Getting Started With Digital Accessibility” — featuring experts from Skyscanner + QualityLogic.
