2 replies to this topic

[snidely]

Hello Everyone,

I am thinking about giving a talk on how usable and accessible web sites do better with Google (and the other engines).

I have always felt that web sites should be usable and accessible and mine always did well with the engines, google in particular. Of course I would optimize the text and the page itself, but always felt that if a human would like the site then the engines would too...so I never used weird tricks to spam the engines.

So now I want to link good accessible and usable web sites to good search engine coverage, as I still believe that this is true even today. However, I have seen other people say this and then others have disagreed totally with that approach.

What are your opinions? Has anyone tested this theory out? I may try to develop two pages and try to see what happens, but that is down the road. Has anyone else done it? Seen it in action?

I would love to get any feedback or advice that you have about this topic.

Thanks

Snidely

[chrishirst]

They are not necessarily going to do "better", but as SE crawlers and indexers are similar in their working to assistive devices and by making sure that your pages are accessible means that you will have paid more attention to the users an visitors to the site rather trying to force a result with silly tricks. So because SEs also want to provide pages that are built for users you are more than half way to helping the SEs rather than fighting with them.

[Jill]

Since search engines are looking for the best sites for their users (the searchers), it would make sense that the most usable sites would naturally rise to the top.