In traditional marketing you're looking to define your targeted audience for your business or organisation. In Internet marketing things work in the same way. Unfortunately, with the growing popularity of the Internet in the past years and with the growing number of people building sites, a certain part of the online audience has been overlooked.
Why Consider Web Accessibility in your Search Engine Marketing Campaign?
Accessibility on the web means making changes to a website so that everyone, no matter what browser or computer they're using, disabled, visually impaired or not, can benefit of the same online experience like everyone else.
Let's take the following example. Let's say that your business offers banking and financial services. Your target audience would most likely be adults, men and women, of a certain age, with a certain income.
Some people who fit that profile can also happen to be visually impaired or disabled. They are still part of your targeted audience. Websites that show no regard to their condition are just as bad as doors slammed in their faces. You lose them as customers and they are likely to spread the word about your disregard for them to their friends and family. That is a bad marketing decision. Not only is it a bad marketing decision but it is also illegal in the UK according to the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act.
How To Ensure Accessibility of Your Website
Web accessibility means that your website is accessible to the widest possible audience. The World Wide Web Consortium has come up with straight forward guidelines to help designers improve the accessibility of websites, There is also the Bobby, a tool that evaluates websites and determines their accessibility.
What you have to do is ensure that the people who build your website comply with both the W3C and Bobby Accessibility guidelines.
Accessibility and Search Engine Optimisation
Most search engine optimisation consultants won't admit it, but creating usable and accessible web sites is probably the most effective element of a long term SEO strategy. Take ALT and TITLE attributes (the explanatory notes that appear when you set your mouse over an image or a link) were introduced first as assistive elements for the visually impaired who could not see or read the content of images. It wasn't until search engines factored them in the ranking algorithm that people were given the incentive to use them.
Another technique promoted by the W3C is to make link text as descriptive as possible. In recent times link text and its descriptive character has become one of the most important factors in SEO.
This tells us two things:
- That various web accessibility techniques are taken into account by search engines to refine their results. It's likely that in the future, more of these techniques will be factored in. The need for better results comes from the fact that SEO is becoming too popular to be able to differentiate and accurately rank sites based on quality.
- That search engines factoring in these techniques coupled with the popularity of SEO are likely to grow awareness on the importance of accessibility which can only benefit both the web and users.
Web Accessibility in the Present and the Future
For now, the practice of web accessibility is just at the beginning. However, this does not mean you should pay extra for an accessible site. Creating such sites is just good Internet marketing practice. So shop around and pick a web designer or search engine marketing company that can do that for you.
Starting out on the right foot with your website is essential for the future of your search engine optimisation campaign. It's a good investment that's guaranteed to carry weight in search engine optimisation and make your website future proof. You'll sit back and thank your lucky stars that you were inspired enough to give accessibility the attention it deserves. Not only will it save you money in the future, but it will increase ROI in the present.
Choosing a Professional SEO or DIY?
This article was first published on 10 August 2004 and does not necessarily match current events or the current opinions and views of bigmouthmedia ltd.
