Accessibility Meets SEO: Boost rankings and usability with the same fixes?!

Join co-hosts Natalie Garza and digital accessibility expert Natalie MacLees for episode 34 of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This episode delves into the overlap between accessibility and SEO, highlighting how both can benefit from keyword targeting, content readability, page titles, link purposes, headings, and adaptable content.

The hosts discuss various Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) criteria that also enhance SEO and provide practical tips for making your website more accessible and search-engine-friendly.

Intro: Accessibility Meets SEO

Natalie Garza: Hello everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is episode 34. I’m one of the co-hosts, Natalie Garza, and with me today is,

Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees, the other co-host.

Natalie Garza: And she is a digital accessibility expert here to walk us through today’s topic, which is the overlap, the handshake between accessibility and SEO.

Intro: Accessibility Meets SEO

So let’s give the viewers a little refresher. What does SEO even stand for to begin with?

Natalie MacLees: Search engine optimization. And it’s just some things that you can do on your website to make sure that search engines are more likely to find it, especially when they’re searching for particular keywords.

Natalie Garza: Yeah, and we’re not gonna get into all SEO basics. We just wanna show you guys how much overlap there is between accessibility topics and fixes for your website and SEO improvements.

Alt Text and Non-Text Content

So, starting off with the concept of keyword targeting. Basically, creating content based on what people search for. So what is the first WCAG success criterion that we’re gonna talk about that overlaps with this?

Natalie MacLees: Yeah, so 1.1.1, which is called Non-text Content, but this is basically the WCAG rule that says our images need alt text. It says some other things as well, but that’s the main thing that most people take away from that one.

So you do wanna make sure that if you have non-decorative images, images that are conveying information of some kind, that they have alternative text.

So for somebody who can’t see the image, for whatever reason, they can still get information about what is contained in that image. Search engines can’t see your images, so they also benefit from having alt text.

Where you wanna be careful is that your alt text is for people first. So don’t just use your alt text for keyword stuffing for SEO. Make sure it works for people first.

Natalie Garza: Exactly. Yeah. Would you be embarrassed if this gets shown to a person, or will this be actually helpful? So alt text is a great way to incorporate keywords.

Keep It Simple: Reading Level

What’s the next way to incorporate keyword targeting that also overlaps with accessibility?

Natalie MacLees: Yeah, so your content itself, so we have 3.1.5 Reading Level, we wanna keep things to about an eighth grade reading level. So if you’re not in the US that’s around like junior high, like where you are when you’re 12 or 13 years old. Very friendly, straightforward language, that is going to be helpful for the search engines to ingest that and figure out what your page is about.

But it’s also helpfu...