Technics For Search Engine Optimisation
April 11th, 2010 | 
Author: Technics For Search Engine Optimisation
Many web designers view searchengine optimization SEO as a dirty trick and with good reason: search engine optimizers often pollute search engine results with spam making it harder to
find relevant information when searching. But in fact there is more than one type of searchengine optimization. In common usage blackhat SEO seeks to achieve high rankings in search
engines by any means possible whereas whitehat SEO seeks to code web pages in a way that is friendly to search engines.
Two years later I am going to take Brandons conclusions a step further. I have been a search engine optimizer for several years but only recently have become infatuated with web
accessibility. After reading for weeks and painstakingly editing my personal website to comply with most W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines I have come to a startling revelation: high
accessibility overlaps heavily with effective white hat SEO.
Accessibility for all users even search engines
On further reflection this overlap makes sense. The goal of accessibility is to make web content accessible to as many people as possible including those who experience that content under
technical physical or other constraints. It may be useful to think of search engines as users with substantial constraints: they cant read text in images cant interpret JavaScript or applets and
cant view many other kinds of multimedia content. These are the types of problems that accessibility is supposed to solve in the first place.
Walking through a few checkpoints
Now that Ive discussed the theory of why high accessibility overlaps with effective SEO I will show how it does so. To do this I am going
to touch upon each Priority 1 checkpoint in the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines which affects searchengine optimization.
1.1 Provide a text equivalent for every nontext element.
Not only are search engines unable to understand image and movie files they also cannot interpret any textual content that is based on vision such as ASCII art. alt and longdesc attributes will
therefore help them understand the subject of any such content.
Search engines are also deaf in reference to audio files. Again providing textual descriptions to these files allows search engines to better interpret and rank the content that they cannot hear.
1.2 Provide redundant text links for each active region of a serverside image map.
Text links are very important to search engines since anchor text often succinctly labels the content of a links target page. In fact many search engine optimizers consider anchor text to be the
single most important factor in modern search algorithms. If a website uses an image map rather than a textbased menu as the primary navigational method a redundant textonly menu
elsewhere on the page will give search engines additional information about the content of each target page.
4.1 Clearly identify changes in the natural language of a documents text and any text equivalents.
Major search engines maintain country and languagespecific indexes. Specifying the language of a document or of text within a document helps search engines decide in which
indexes to place it.
6.3 Ensure that pages are usable when scripts applets or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported
Some users choose to disable JavaScript and applets in their browsers preferences while other users browsers do not support these technologies at all. Likewise search engines browsers
do not read scripts; therefore a webpages usability should not be crippled when scripts are not supported. Otherwise search engines may not even index the page let alone rank it well.
14.1 Use the clearest and simplest language appropriate for a sites content.
It is a bit less obvious how this particular checkpoint aids SEO. But if a website contains the clearest and simplest language appropriate
for the sites content it is probably using those keywords with which potential searchers will be most familiar. Searchers tend to use succinct queries containing familiar language. Thus to
receive maximum traffic from search engines it is best that a website contain the same words which the sites audience will use when searching.
The benefits do not end with Priority 1many of the Priority 2 and 3 Checkpoints are important for SEO purposes too. For instance Checkpoints 6.2 and 6.5 refer to the accessibility of dynamic
content. In fact making dynamic content search enginefriendly is one of the most daunting tasks a search engine optimizer faces when working on an ecommerce or databasedriven site.
Following the W3Cs recommendations can help to avoid any indexing or ranking problems related to using dynamic content.
From the horses mouth
If you doubt any of the above perhaps a visit to Googles Webmaster Guidelines could convince you that Google rewards high accessibility. This page specifically mentions best practices
which will help Google find index and rank your site.
Design and Content Guidelines:
* Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
* Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links you may want to break the site map into separate pages.
* Create a useful informationrich site and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
* Think about the words users would type to find your pages and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
* Try to use text instead of images to display important names content or links. The Google crawler doesnt recognize text contained in images.
* Make sure that your title and alt tags are descriptive and accurate.
Technical Guidelines:
* Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript cookies session IDs
frames DHTML or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.
The checkpoints I highlighted above are just a few of the many ways that high accessibility will help optimize a website for search enginesmany of the other checkpoints in the W3C Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines are helpful to SEO as well. Of course to most web designers the goal of accessibility is and should be to make sites accessible to all people independent of
their platform or any disabilities they have. But if accessibility gets a website more traffic from Google even better!
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