Ignoring this website essential can harm your search ranking

July 22, 2024

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While many companies value accessibility in principle, implementing it in a way that benefits both your customers and your company can be challenging. Online presence in particular is one area where accessibility is often overlooked. One study found that 95% of websites do not meet the accessibility standards of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Some of the downsides of not being fully accessible are obvious: these include legal consequences, negative brand image, and lack of inclusion and support for people with disabilities. While accessibility is a good thing in itself and may be required by law depending on your location, it also impacts your website's SEO.

Related: How website accessibility impacts your brand's reputation and success

Accessibility and SEO

Many companies don't realize that if they don't prioritize accessibility, their SEO efforts are wasted. The level of accessibility of your website has a significant impact on conversion rates, rankings, and organic traffic. One study found that prioritizing accessibility solutions resulted in an “average 12% increase in overall traffic.”

Technically, accessibility is an aspect of user experience that Google heavily factors into rankings. Since SEO campaigns involve revamping your website and improving the user experience, they offer one of the best ways to implement accessibility strategies and effectively achieve multiple brand goals.

To minimize accessibility errors on your site while improving SEO, it's important to understand the principles of accessibility and some of the key starting points for an inclusive, search-friendly website.

4 Principles of accessibility

The principles of accessibility come from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Although this law does not only apply to websites, its principles are helpful guidelines for developing an SEO campaign that focuses on accessibility.

Perceivable: All users should be able to access and understand the content on your website. This requires you to consider users with different language, hearing or cognitive abilities.
Accessible: Your website must be easy to navigate and use for users with disabilities.
Understandable: Both the content and structure of your website should be easy to understand.
Robust: A robust website functions quickly and smoothly without breaking accessibility tools such as alt text or image captions. It must also be easily adaptable to evolving accessibility guidelines and tools.

Related: 4 resources to make your website more accessible

7 ways to improve your website accessibility

While the principles of accessibility are fairly general, there are some very concrete steps you can follow to create an accessible website.

Make sure your website is compatible with assistive technologies: Many people use assistive technologies to access websites, especially if they are visually impaired. To meet accessibility requirements, you need to modify HTML elements to ensure your website is compatible with technologies. Many companies rely on SEO experts or accessibility widgets to meet these standards.
Implement transcripts and subtitles for accessible videos: Transcripts and subtitles allow people with hearing impairments to engage with your content. Additionally, search engines can more easily understand and index your content when you have included subtitles.
Provide alt text: If your website relies too heavily on images and there is no alt text, your content will be inaccessible to many users and harder for search engines to index. Provide clear alt text for visual content to avoid this mistake.
Evaluate readability: One of the most common accessibility mistakes is not providing adequate color contrast. You can use a color contrast testing tool to make sure the contrast on your site is neither too low nor too high.
Reorganize navigation: Reorganizing your website's structure and navigation will improve user experience and indexability. Elements like title tags, page titles, header structure, and breadcrumb navigation should all be optimized to improve click-through rate and accessibility.
Find guidelines to follow: Before you begin, it's important that you know which guidelines apply to you. These guidelines can help you develop specific accessibility goals. Many websites must meet WCAG 2 Level AA guidelines, as well as other national guidelines like the ADA. To stay compliant, you should stay up to date, as these regulations and guidelines are constantly changing.
Use accessibility auditing tools: It can be difficult to identify and fix accessibility errors on your own. Consider using accessibility auditing tools or hiring an SEO company that is well versed in current accessibility practices.

Related: To improve digital accessibility, we must start from within

Accessibility is a worthwhile investment for your business in many ways. An accessible website is easier to navigate for all your users as well as search engines. This increases user engagement, lowers bounce rates, and increases natural traffic. Keep your business compliant with accessibility guidelines and increase your engagement with internet users of all ability levels by prioritizing accessibility as part of your SEO efforts.