The missing component
Given the importance of search engine optimisation it’s strange that no one seems to consider it when pages are designed.
We work closely with SEO companies who complain to us that they are only brought in to the picture long after a site has been launched. By then, failures in the structure and coding of the site mean that they’re limited in what they can do for a site.
We don’t think that search engines should be the prime consideration in site design. But search engines are central to user experience of the Web. You ignore them at your peril.
So we’ve listened carefully to our SEO partners. The result is that we are able to design sites that are ready for search engine optimisation.
It’s accessibility but not as we know it
Many of the best practices that we bring from accessibility apply to search engine optimisation.
After all, accessibility is really about making it easier for automated software (like screen readers) to interpret sites. Well the automated software that is most often used to probe your site is Google.