Best practices

Accessibility and SEO: why an accessible site ranks better

Structure, text alternatives, performance: what makes a site accessible also makes it more legible for search engines and AI.

Accessibility and search ranking pursue a common goal: making content understandable by everyone, humans and machines alike. Many best practices overlap.

A clear structure benefits both

A consistent heading hierarchy, navigation landmarks and well-organised text help screen readers and search engines understand the page.

Text alternatives feed the index

Describing images with a text alternative makes information accessible and at the same time gives context to engines, which do not see the image.

Performance and legibility

An accessible site avoids the traps that slow down or blur machine reading. Content readable without relying on colour, explicit links and clean markup improve the experience and automated understanding.

And on the AI side

AI answer engines cite content that is clear, structured and reliable. An accessible, well-marked-up and honest site stands every chance of being better understood and better cited.