Does Poor Website Accessibility Affect Your Rankings?

Relying on Google and other search engines has become part of our daily lives. From finding recipes, to learning about various topics, to finding and purchasing various products and services, search engines are becoming more reliable every day. Now, to ensure that customers can visit her website, she should focus on making the website easily accessible. Google uses several ranking factors to determine the position of a URL on search engine result pages (SERPs). Website accessibility is not considered a direct ranking factor by Google, but it does have an indirect relationship. In this post, we will tackle the important question, “Can poor website accessibility hurt your rankings?” You’ll also learn about some of the problem areas and what strategies you should implement to improve your website’s accessibility.

Why is there a Web Accessibility Standard?

Ideally, a website should be intuitive, easy to use, and considered accessible by everyone. However, many website owners do not meet this requirement. This is mainly due to a lack of sufficient knowledge, which is why website accessibility standards are needed. These standards ensure that everyone is on the same page and enable designers and developers to implement these standards to create accessible websites. By clearly defining these website accessibility standards, website owners can ensure that best practices for website accessibility are being followed.

The relationship between web accessibility and SEO

SEO plays a big role in improving your website’s ranking and positioning on search pages. So where does web accessibility work? If your website is easy to use for many people, including people with disabilities, you are more likely to rank better in search engines.

This means that if your website is optimized with good content and accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities, it will rank higher on search pages.

Areas dealing with website accessibility

One of the main battlegrounds for websites is finding the right balance between accessibility and design. This is because web designers and developers often prioritize accessibility over design and vice versa. for example:

• Confuse website visitors and screen readers with unnecessary pop-ups and pop-ups.
• Images with text in very small font sizes.
• The website is difficult to navigate. Lack of properly structured tables.
• Images with low-contrast text suitable for visually impaired website visitors.
• There is no “skip to content” link.

There are several ways web designers and developers can find the right balance between design and accessibility. This is suitable for websites built from scratch or using pre-made layouts.

Accessibility Improvement Strategy

To be compliant, your website must follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provided by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

• Perceptible
• Operation possible
• It can be understood
• Robust

There are several methods you can implement to ensure that these guidelines are followed. Some of these methods are listed below

• Content management system –

When choosing a content management system, be sure to choose the one that best supports accessibility. The accessible system also makes it easy for designers and developers to add necessary accessibility elements and features such as anchor text, high contrast text, and alt text. Some of these platforms also provide full access to HTML files, so you can create accessibility features yourself.

• Descriptive alt text

About 50% of digital content is in the form of images. Therefore, they should be considered one of the most important elements in the process of making your website accessible. One of the best ways to properly optimize your images is to use descriptive alt text. Alt text is basically alternative text that provides an accurate description of images placed on your website. Clearly explain the contextual purpose of the images on your website. Writing good alt text has two benefits:

• This helps a visually impaired website visitor understand how the images relate to the content on her website.
• It makes your content easier for search crawlers to understand and ranks higher on search pages.

• Content Organizational Structure

HTML plays a key role in determining how and in what order content is read by screen readers and her web accessibility software. This means that you should follow a logical content organization structure. An ideal content structure includes a page structure consisting of a header, main content, headings and footers. Headlines are important elements that help readers browse her web pages. Your content typically contains 6 headings (H1 to H6) and you should use these headings depending on your content. First and foremost, you should have a catchy headline that lets readers know what to expect in your main content. Again, good headlines can help your webpage rank higher on search pages, and they can also help visually impaired users decide whether or not to stay on your site.

• Descriptive Anchor Text

Links are common on websites, and you should pay attention not only to where you link, but also how you link. It’s important to use descriptive anchor text. This gives readers a clear idea of ​​where they will go when they click the hyperlink. For example, non-descriptive anchor text is like asking readers to click the word “here” in a sentence like “Click here to learn more about this offering.” Instead of using non-descriptive anchor text, we recommend using links as naturally as possible in your content.

Conclusion

Having an accessible website essentially means that a website should be accessible and easy to use by every visitor. This includes people with physical disabilities, cognitive limitations, and other factors as well, such as internet speed, bandwidth restrictions, etc.

Visit SEOgrey today to know more about this software, the readers will know that they will be directed to the SEOgrey website. Using such descriptive anchor text will provide clear information on where the hyperlink will lead them. This in turn helps them to decide whether or not they want to click on the hyperlink.