On Tuesday 27th of September, AbilityNet was joined by: - Kim Durbridge, Senior Content Writer at Skyscanner - Gryffydd Coates Software Engineer at Skyscanner - Jack Smale, Website Manager at AXA - Nathan Smith, SEO Manager at AXA to help you to learn about how accessibility can boost SEO rankings (Search Engine Optimisation is the process of improving your website to increase its visibility). This free webinar brought together experts in the field of SEO and accessibility to highlight the benefits that accessibility can bring to SEO rankings. It looked at real-life examples from both halves of the picture.

1. How accessibility improves SEO - with Skyscanner and AXA 27/09/22
How accessibility improves SEO
Mark Walker, AbilityNet
Kim Durbridge and Gryffydd Coates, Skyscanner
Jack Smale and Nathan Smith, AXA
27 September 2022

2. How accessibility improves SEO - with Skyscanner and AXA 27/09/22
Welcome
• Live captions from MyClearText – turn them on using the CC
option on the control panel
• Additional captions available:
www.streamtext.net/player?event=AbilityNet
• Slides are available at www.slideshare.net/abilitynet
• Slides, a transcript and recording www.abilitynet.org.uk/SEO-webinar
• Please use the Q&A window to ask questions
• Feedback form to post-webinar

3. How accessibility improves SEO - with Skyscanner and AXA 27/09/22
Panelists
Mark Walker, Head of
Marketing and
Portfolio
AbilityNet
Kim Durbridge, Senior
Content Writer
Skyscanner
Gryffydd Coates,
Software Engineer
Skyscanner
Jack Smale,
Website Manager
AXA
Nathan Smith,
SEO Manager
AXA

4. How accessibility improves SEO - with Skyscanner and AXA 27/09/22
Agenda
• Introduction
• AXA
• Skyscanner
• Panel discussion
• Audience Q&A with panellist

5. September 2022
AXA Health
Accessibility SEO
Webinar

6. 6
SEO and Accessibility Overlap - Title Tags
Title tags are important for SEO
They are located in the code in the head element of the page as shown below.
Title tags are also important for accessibility as they are the first thing a screen reader user hears
when a page loads.
Here’s the Google search results page showing the title tag for our main small business health
insurance landing page:
Title of the presentationl Date

7. 7
SEO and Accessibility Overlap - Heading Tags
For quick and easy navigation, many screen reader users navigate using various elements on
the page such as headings.
They are also important for SEO, telling Google what different sections of the page are about.
As a general rule, there should only be one H1 tag per page.
Further headings should then flow logically as you scroll down a page H2, H3 H4, H5 etc – this
natural flow will also benefit our accessibility users for their screen readers to tell them the
semantic structure of the page.
Title of the presentationl Date

8. 8
SEO and Accessibility Overlap - Links
External links are very important for SEO as Google sees them as votes of confidence by other sites if
you have links from them.
Google’s original algorithm called PageRank can be shown here opposite, and links continue to be
very important today.
Internal links are also important for SEO, how all your pages are interlinked.
Title of the presentationl Date
When it comes to accessibility, link text is also critical.
The anchor text of a link is the text that makes up the link itself.
Google reads all the text of the link and you’re more likely to
rank for the phrase within the text.
This text also needs to be clear for our accessibility users,
telling them what the next page is about should they look to
click through.

9. 9
SEO and Accessibility Overlap – Alt Text
Alt text helps to increase the chances of being found in image-based search engines for
important, targeted keyword phrases.
You can add alt text to any image by using the correct html tags.
Screen reader users depend on this field to understand what’s contained in an image.
It’s important to correctly describe what the image is in the alt text tag so our accessibility users
can be told what the image is showing, and also to name the image files appropriately.

10. 10
SEO and Accessibility Overlap – Others
Providing transcripts and captions for video.
Sitemaps and site search - allowing multiple ways of finding content on the site.
Using text instead of images when possible.
Ensuring URLs are human readable and logical.
Presenting a clear and consistent navigation and page structure.
Defining abbreviations and acronyms.
In summary: Good accessibility and good search engine optimisation (SEO) is a great
combination for website owners and end users.

11. 11
Tools we use to measure Accessibility
Wave is one of the tools we use to measure
accessibility.
You simply enter your page you want to check and then
the whole process is automated.
It can identify many accessibility and Web Content
Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) errors which we are
then able to address.
Title of the presentationl Date

12. 12
Tools we use to measure Accessibility
We also use Google Lighthouse.
Like Wave, you can simply enter your page you want to
check and then the whole process is automated.
It give an overall Accessibility score out of 100 and then
give solutions on how to fix the issues.
Title of the presentationl Date

13. 13
Thanks!

14. Skyscanner’s SEO and a11y journey so far
Hello!

15. Building and populating these pages with the dynamic data to make
each unique
Sr. Content Writer SEO Engineer
Transactional flights, hotels and car hire landing pages, scaled for
every airport, city, country, region and route.

16. Accessibility
Champions
Network

17. Regular meet ups,
work shares and guest
speakers
Embedded within
Skyscanner’s culture
Implementation and
persuasion is
incentivised
(But we’ve still got a long way to go with
embedding in full product).

18. Making our SEO landing pages accessible
• Annotate designs
• Stark plugin for Figma
• Spec out content components for SEO & a11y build with a11y experts
• Capture these in our internal design framework, Backpack
- Ensuring a product is accessible first time round = 5% resource. Retrofitting a11y
into an existing product is often >20% .
• All a11y labels and screen reader text submitted with copy
• A11y ‘sign off’ is an official stream of sign off for copywriting
• Peer reviewing a design between engs
• Usablenet’s AQA testing

19. Validating the
impact

20. Copy testing
A/B split testing using
SearchPilot
experimentation tool for
SEO. Try… Look for legacy pages that rank relatively well or
get a healthy amount of traffic.
Implement more readable copy and monitor
organic sessions.
• Add transcripts below video
• Building lists and tables in an accessible way
• Basic alt text, and H titles.

21. Thanks

22. How accessibility improves SEO - with Skyscanner and AXA 27/09/22
Audience Q&A
Please use the Q&A window, not
the chat window
Slides, transcripts and a recording
of this online event will be made
available

23. How accessibility improves SEO - with Skyscanner and AXA 27/09/22
• 10% discount code: AbilityNetWebinar10
www.abilitynet.org.uk/training
• Embedding accessibility at every stage of your project 6 October
• Accessibility for copywriters 12 October
Accessibility training courses

24. How accessibility improves SEO - with Skyscanner and AXA 27/09/22
AbilityNet TechShare Pro 2022
• Europe's largest gathering
of accessibility and inclusion
professionals and their allies
Book now:
• www.techsharepro.com
• Early bird tickets until 1 October

25. How accessibility improves SEO - with Skyscanner and AXA 27/09/22
• Send an email to our Digital Accessibility Services team
at sales@abilitynet.org.uk
• Sign up to our newsletter: https://www.abilitynet.org.uk/newsletter
• Sign up to our next webinar at abilitynet.org.uk/webinars
-Accessibility Insights with Heather Dowdy from Netflix.
-Don't Disable Me: How organisational culture and equipment enables inclusion
Speak to our accessibility experts