Websites that use accessible, standards compliant, semantic code will get better search engine results.
Why? Search engines read the contents of a website automatically using search spider software. This interprets pages in a very similar way to screen reading software used by the blind. You can think of Google as the web's biggest blind user.
Accessibility is not only a legal requirement, it's essential for search engine visibility.
Barriers to accessibility and search engines include:
Ensuring that there are no barriers is the first step, but more can be done. Pages should include all relevant meta-tags (embedded data) such as keywords, description and author. Although these alone do not ensure a high PageRank, they do help a little.
Additionally including a search engine instruction file (robots.txt) will help the search engines to index your site, as will including a site map on your website and submitting a site map to sitemaps.org when structure changes are made.
Beyond this, the list of adjustments and tweaks that can be performed to optimise code is almost endless. The most important factor is to ensure that the underlying code of every page can be read semantically, in order and has meaning.
Optimising the code can be taken too far. Whilst achieving a high search engine ranking is important, this must be balanced with consideration for design, usability, functionality and printing. As well as being searchable and accessible, your site should reinforce your brand, be pleasant to use and promote repeat visitors.
Special Educational Needs and Disability Act
BBC: New standards for website access
"Google is, for all intents, a blind user. A billionaire blind user with tens of millions of friends, all of whom hang on his every word. I suspect Google will have a stronger impact than [laws] in building accessible websites."Karsten M. Self
All websites at Featurecreep are written to be search engine friendly. Contact us for further details of our website development and optimisation services.