# Accessibility and SEO

DevFeed: [Accessibility and SEO](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/accessibility-and-seo-9365.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://a11yproject.com/posts/accessibility-seo/>)

Author: Cooper Hollmaier

Published: 2021-07-01T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [The A11Y Project](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/the-a11y-project.md>)

Topics: [Accessibility](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/accessibility.md>), [Search engine optimization (SEO)](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/seo.md>), [HTML](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/html.md>), [html elements](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/html-elements.md>), [Google](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/google.md>), [Web](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/web.md>)

Tags: [accessibility](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/accessibility.md>), [content](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/content.md>), [google](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/google.md>), [html](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/html.md>), [html-elements](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/html-elements.md>), [links](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/links.md>), [search](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/search.md>), [seo](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/seo.md>), [web](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/web.md>)

## AI overview

This article explains that accessibility and search engine optimization often benefit from the same people-centered practices. It discusses meaningful section headings, page structure, HTML headings, and descriptive anchor text as ways to improve navigation for people while helping search engines understand and discover content.

## Source excerpt

Search engine optimization and accessibility have a lot more in common than you would think. Many of the same practices that we use to enable everyone to enjoy our digital experiences also open the doors for search engines. The intersection of people and search engines Search engine optimization often gets a bad reputation. In the early years, marketers were adding blocks of keywords into pages by the truck load. Getting to the top of the results by any means necessary was the game. Companies focused on publishing content that was machine-first, not people-first. The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry has since evolved. Marketers who choose to build for people over profit, are those that gain increased visibility online. Catering to bots and algorithm changes, by contrast, is often a game of whack-a-mole and traffic gains are short lived. Below, we will examine some of the ways accessibility and SEO teams can work together towards a future where everyone wins. Headings Search engines crawl through an endless sea of webpages everyday. Assembling information into search results would be impossible without some semblance of structure. This is where section headings come into play. When implemented to provide meaning rather than styling, headings create an easy way to scan and navigate a document for all people. <!-- Meh --> <strong>Animals</strong> <p>Monkeys, Lions, Bears</p> <!-- Better --> <h1>Animals</h1> <p>Monkey, lions, and bears are all examples of animals.</p> <h2>Monkeys</h2> <p>Monkeys are primarily found in tropical rain forests.</p> <h2>Lions</h2> <p>All wild lions live on the African continent, with the exception of a small population in western India.</p> <h2>Bears</h2> <p>Species of bears exist almost everywhere in the world.</p> Properly implemented HTML section headings help search engines, too. To determine if a page is relevant to a person's search, Google has to know about the contents of a page. If a page title isn't present in the code, se