Building accessible websites is a habit. It’s a mindset that should be adopted from the first day of planning to the last hour of quality assurance. An architect plans the wheelchair ramps from the first building blueprints; a developer should always reference a mental checklist of accessibility considerations from the first wireframes and comps in Photoshop. The rest of this chapter explores two key aspects of accessibility. First, it covers the legal requirements for corporations and web developers. This varies from country to country and occasionally changes, but we’ll do our best to navigate those thorny paths. Second, it covers what you can do—today—to apply unobtrusive accessibility tactics to your site without disrupting the design or architecture. Even the smallest improvements in the markup can have tremendous benefits to a significant number of users, and we’ll cover the critical basics before establishing a roadmap for future learning.   Read more

Here’s the reality: people search with words that make sense to them. For most people, that means plain, short, common words, not the oblique marketing speak so prevalent on the Web. Too many corporate sites (and the technology sector is by far the most consistent offender) feature marketing messages so pregnant with buzzwords, made-up phrases, and convoluted clauses that it’s questionable whether the original writer has any clue what he was trying to communicate. The company that speaks in everyday vernacular will simply appeal to a wider customer base. For instance, people will not type “integrated premises-based ECM solution” into a search engine. So if your site says that, you are missing a disproportionately large segment of your target audience. Someone might type in “content management for accounts payable.” Maybe. More likely, that person will search for “software to organize invoices,” and then find the company that solves this problem without talking about all of that ECM mumbo jumbo.   Read more

Once the optimization strategy is defined, it’s a matter of tactical execution. In SEO, there are many, many things that can be done to support the campaign, from internal content tweaking to external link building to continued keyword research and competitive analysis. Successful campaigns are a blend of these channels—relying on any single device is like driving an 18-wheel truck on only one tire. Methods for SEO can be placed into one of two broad categories: SEO-specific tweaks made to the website itself (internal), and tactics outside the domain (external). Beyond that, it’s just a cycle of research, strategy evaluation, and campaign monitoring to ensure the effort is actually driving desired marketing results, not just upping the number of visitors.  Read more

When a company decides to embrace SEO in an effort to complement its marketing effort, it has embarked on an “SEO campaign.” Like any advertising or broader marketing crusade, it is a two-pronged effort: strategy and tactics. Common SEO methodology is well known among search professionals. What separates successful campaigns from failing campaigns is the strategy behind the effort. While anyone can drive a car in the dark, having a map, headlights, and street signs sure helps get there faster without disaster.   Read more

Before Google, search engines like AltaVista were buggy and unreliable. Metadata spammers loaded their pages with junky keywords to obfuscate their true content, and search engine ranking systems were too dumb to tell the difference between legitimate information and falsified junk. Today, search engines are more sophisticated. They base their rankings on site popularity, taking into account factors such as the number of incoming links, the source of those links, and the context surrounding them.  Read more