Accessibility search
-
Hello there,
One of the sites we do work for is a chain of care homes. We are in the process of adding a page reader so any visitors they have who are visually impaired will find it easier to access the info they need.
We're doing this from a usability point of view more than anything (given their target audience), but while looking to see if there were any accessibility news sites /directories we could leverage for some links I came across mentions of the old Google Accessibility search. It seems to have been before my time as an SEO, so I wondered:
-
is this still relevant, or has it just been assimilated into the regular algorithm (the only mentions I could find were very dated)
-
if relevant and separate from the main search, are there many who use it
-
what other things should we take into account when trying to optimise for this (assuming it's still relevant, of course)
Cheers guys!
-
-
Cheers Ryan,
That's kind of what I suspected - most of the best practice things that also affect SEO in some way (alt tags etc) we're already doing, and we were going to put together a press release highlighting the extra accessibility lengths we've gone to that will hopefully get a bit of attention. So as long as I'm not missing anything, that's cool!
-
I am not aware of any part of Google's algorithm which compares two websites and says "site A is accessible and site B is not, so give site A a boost".
The relevant points I can share are many accessibility features tie into SEO:
-
ALT tags for images are considered an accessibility feature, and they also add strong SEO benefits.
-
Receiving an accessibility certification can offer numerous benefits. You may be listed in the company's directory which would offer your site positive exposure and a link. You can offer a press release announcing your site is now compliant. You can display a trust badge which always looks good and helps visitors trust your site more. You would clearly be used more frequently by visitors who depend on websites being compliant so your stats such as time on site, bounce rate, etc would improve slightly.
-
An accessibility inspection of your website will often reveal issues which impact SEO. Invisible or hidden objects, empty links, etc.
-
-
Thanks for those links Ryan. the W3C is what we us for checking DDA compliance, but I guess it's good to have other sources as a sanity check. My question, however, largely relates to the Google Accessibility search and the SEO benefits of ensuring we're compliant? As I said, I could only find old posts on the subject so I didn't know if it had gone the way of other Google initiatives from days gone by?
-
A few links that may help:
The W3C's Accessibility Initiative website: http://www.w3.org/WAI/
A tool for checking the accessibility of a web page: http://wave.webaim.org/
The company SEOmoz uses for accessibility certification: http://www.rampweb.com/
-
Thanks for that, looks very thorough. I should probably have pointed out that all our sites are DDA compliant anyway, but given this company runs care homes it seems more important - especially if it gives us a rankings edge over the competition.
-
No really SEO related, but a good read anyhow
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg701983(v=VS.85).aspx
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can we change Title and/or Descriptions Dynamically Based on Search Query
If I recall we used to be able to change our title attributes tag dynamically based on the search query but not sure if it's possible now or if it makes sense to do so. Thoughts? Rosemary
On-Page Optimization | | RosemaryB1 -
Snippet showing as domain name with apostrophe, instead of page title when searching for the domain name.
Hi, We have an issue with one of our websites, with the snippet dispaying differently in Google serps when searching for the domain or the website name rather than a search term. When searching for a search term, the page title shows as expected, but when searching for the site by the domain name either with or without the tld, it shows the snippet as the domain name with an apostrophe at the end. Domain is subli.co.uk Thanks in advance for any advice!
On-Page Optimization | | K3v1n0 -
Google is showing product rating of 1-star in search results when average rating is 3.7 - 4 stars
When searching for the brand name "SteriPEN", the #3 listing on the SERP is for one of SteriPEN's "Adventurer Opti" product at REI.com, On the SERP for this search, the REI listing for Adventurer Opti product displays showing the product as 1-star based on a product review from 2010. What we don't understand is the fact that the product history has a 3.7 to 4.2 rating on most websites. Why would a product with so many reviews and established history have 1 review that drives the 1-star rating from such a prominent retailer? Makes no sense. Any suggestions as to whom we might be able to contact for help with this is greatly appreciated. edit?usp=sharing
On-Page Optimization | | ReachMaineAgency0 -
Google search: 'define:____'
See: http://screencast.com/t/oFSzIt5rRm Thrilled that Google is pulling our content over wikipedia (in this instance). Wondering how we can assure more success like this. Mike Corso
On-Page Optimization | | Mike_c
Gartner.com1 -
Search by popular terms
This may be a simple question and possibly already answered to death - but I think i'm not asking or googling the right question so I haven't been able to get a good answer for it. Some websites have a feature at the bottom of their page where one can "search by popular terms", consisting of keywords linked to the search result of that term. Some websites do this: http://www.kogan.com/au/search-terms/ This must be obviously an optimisation technique, but how does this benefit ranking? Are there any down sides to this? Is this still a current good practice?
On-Page Optimization | | central60 -
USA appears in search snippet
Buongiorno from 14 degrees C very cloudy Wetherby UK, When I type "Dartex Coatings" in Google i get a search snippet with USA in the description. See illustration: http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/usa-indescription-2_zps42296e0a.jpg I cannot see where this is comming from on site http://www.dartexcoatings.com/ . HAving checked the souce code there is no reference to USA 😞 So my question is please..."where is Google picking up USA from"? Grazie,
On-Page Optimization | | Nightwing
David0 -
Ecommerce internal search results pages
I'm working on a ecommerce site that allows product search results pages to be sorted a variety of ways (best selling, newest, by price). Each of these search filters creates a new url i.e. /all/best/1 and /all/best/2; /all/new/1 and /all/new/2; etc. These search results pages have been indexed and the site is receiving enough organic traffic from these pages that I don't want to add noindex,follow to them. I am planning on implementing rel=prev,rel=next for each filter, but I'm concerned about duplicate content considering I can't create unique meta data for each page. Should I canonical all pages to the first search results page without filters applied? Or any other ideas on how I should proceed?
On-Page Optimization | | ang0 -
Title Tag Not Relaying In Google Search
Our title tag is "<title>HCG</span> Diet - HCG Drops - Example Weight Loss - HCG Diet Weight Loss</title>" But in google it is only displaying "HCG diet" Reasons? What can I do to fix this? I'm trying to get this fixed asap, as it is our homepage that is being effected by it.
On-Page Optimization | | HCGDiet0