SEO & accessibility

Hey everyone, this will be the last article in this quick series about accessibility. Today we will be talking about SEO and accessibility. While many developers know what SEO is, I would like to define it so everyone is on the same page, and I’m also going to do that for accessibility in the context of web development. The most important reason to make your site SEO friendly is easy to understand: the better your SEO, the more clicks you will get from google. SEO stands for search engine optimization, and this can take place in many different ways, from speeding your site up to adding alt tags. We will be discussing some SEO tips that also improve your accessibility. I’d also like to take the time to talk about some other forms of accessibility that may not get touched on as much, in the development community. Then I want to walk through how making your site accessible makes it more SEO friendly.
One of the biggest things that impact your SEO is your mobile site speed. Google does this for a few reasons, but I think the biggest two are that people are impatient, and there are still many people who do not have a good connection to the internet. I will not spend time discussing why people are impatient, everyone has their own opinions on that. However, I do want to spend some time discussing why it’s important to design your site with poor connections in mind. There are many people who either have older devices or live in places where there isn’t accessible internet. So making your site light, fast, and responsive means your SEO will improve and it increases the number of people who can access your site. Making a site faster also makes more accessible for a few reasons, it makes it easier to navigate since tools will be faster to load. I’ve also noticed that faster sites tend to have a very clear hierarchy, which makes your site have better SEO + easier to navigate for everyone.
Other things that can improve your SEO scores are things like adding all of your alt tags. Labeling your images helps two groups: the spiders that rank your site and people who use screen readers. Another quick tip is to make sure you use contrasting colors, as this helps people with vision issues, and it will help your SEO score. One final tip is to ensure all of your links have descriptions and make sure it is clear that the link is a link. This is so that keyboard users will be able to navigate your site better, and it makes it easier for the spiders to map out your site.
I hope these definitions and tips helped you learn something new today!