In light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic - OPTASY would like to offer DRUPAL website support for any Healthcare, Government, Education and Non-Profit Organization(s) with critical crisis communication websites or organizations directly providing relief. Stay Safe and Stay Well.

Is SEO Still Relevant? Why? And What Is The Importance of SEO for Your Own Website?
Tips

Is SEO Still Relevant? Why? And What Is The Importance of SEO for Your Own Website?

by Adrian Ababei on Nov 15 2016
                  
A pretty suggestive analogy, isn't it?
 
With all those voices, getting more and more strident, claiming that “SEO is dead” and with the major “seismic waves” shaking the digital world (that the rise of the social media optimization trends have caused), you might ask yourself: what's the importance of SEO nowadays? 
 
Well, allow us to:
 
  • assure you that SEO is far from being dead
  • inform you that SEO is in fact evolving into its better version, adapting itself to all the new challenges of the digital world
 
Here are just some of the arguments that we've put together to help you "stengthen your faith" in SEO: 
 

IT'S YOUR ONLINE STORE/WEBSITE THAT YOUR CUSTUMOERS WILL STEP IN FIRST

 
Before welcoming your potential customer into your physical store, you need to welcome him/her into your online store. 
 
It's here that he'll be looking for reviews that would eventually influence his final decision, it's here that he/she will make first contact with your products (with their more or less eye-pleasing photos and with their more or less relevant and creatively-written, engaging descriptions, too). 
 
OK, so you can't actually welcome your online customer with a smile on your face (you can't be online 24/7 and you might just overwork a face muscle if you stuck a warm, welcoming smile on your face for too long), but you can make him/her at least sense it. How?
 
  • A user-friendly, easy to navigate-through website is key (eye-pleasing colors, easy to read content.)
  • A quickly loading website
  • A lack of annoying pop-ups and ads
  • An amazing user experience, overall, is the key to success
 
Needless to add that all these common sense SEO-specific techniques will rank your website higher in search engines results.
 
For your customer it will be pretty much like in this analogy that we've come up with: shopping in a store placed close to the main entrance of a shopping mall, compared to “enjoying” a shopping experience in a store as hard to find as a clue in a hidden object game.
 

BOOST YOUR BUSINESS CREDIBILITY

 
Although almighty Facebook might have, in your opinion, eroded some of almighty Google's authority, the later still remains The One who bestows authority upon websites (and therefore businesses). 
 
So, if, due to your SEO endeavors, your website shows up in top 3 websites that your future visitor sees the moment he/she types his specific words into the search box and, moreover, if it keeps getting listed in that top each time each he types in other words related to his searches, as well, than he'll (even if many times unconsciously) draw the conclusion that: if Google picked your website and granted it the honor of being listed among the first ones in his search list... well... then it must be worth it. 
 
Take the search engines as the ultimate warrant with an authoritarian voice that can empower your business with credibility before your future visitors/potential customers.
 

ENHANCE YOUR BUSINESS BRAND VISIBILITY

 
Here's a short definition of the “new” type of SEO: “it’s changed so drastically that people really need to learn to think of it as less of a marketing tactic, and more of a branding play.”  (Sam McRoberts, CEO of VUDU Marketing)
 
So, if nowadays SEO it's less about striving to stuff your website with keywords and irrelevant backlinks, so that Google should push you ahead of your competition's website, but about brand visibility, about a far more refined and nonetheless challenging version of SEO, it's more than obvious that: if your target users keep reading your brand's name, over and over again, as they search for their needed services or products online, automatically brand awareness is being build thanks to SEO.
 
It's the whole SEO strategy, integrated into the bigger picture of your online marketing plan, that actually makes this “miracle” possible: that your customer keeps bumping into your website each time they look for their desired products/services.
 

ATTRACT TRAFFIC

 
So, the “new SEO” is all about user-experience, about branding, about engaging content, but even so it still revolves around the same mighty goal: attracting traffic to your website. 
 
The more visitors come in, the more chances you get to actually turn their visits into     sales/subscriptions. 
 
And yet, the real beauty of SEO is not even mere traffic at all, but the qualified leads that this traffic is made of. 
 
Just think about it:

 
  • you're not annoying your customers off by interrupting their favorite TV shows with your TV commercial
  • you're not distracting (and annoying them again) your target clients with a flashy newspaper ad as they're trying to read a piece of news
  • Your visitors already have a certain need/interest (“sort of interest” is gold, compared to none) in the services/product that your provide so convincing them that you're the best provider is already a half-won battle. 
 

GAIN PRICELESS INSIGHT INTO YOUR CUSTOMER'S PROFILE

 
This is gold! 
 
Just think about it: you don't (again”) have to annoy your customer with phone or face to face surveys for collecting valuable data regarding him/her.
 
Upgrade your website with Google Analytics and then you can just “dive” into a “sea” of highly valuable data helping you put together your users' profile: where are they located, at what time of the day do they access your website, what devices do they use, what products to they prefer, how much time do they spend on specific pages on your site etc.
 
Then, it's totally up to you how you turn all that data into fuel for your website. 
 

IN CONCLUSION

 
The importance of SEO hasn't been undermined by the rise of the social media optimization, it has simply adapted to the new challenges that social media faced it with:
 
  • it's quality content-focused 
  • it's user experience-determined
  • it's brand awareness-driven
 
Good old SEO practices (such as non-overloading your websites with keywords and backlinks, having authoritative voices in your field linking to your website, owing a website that doesn't take ages to load and which is both easy to navigate through etc.) are more relevant than ever.
 
People will keep going online to book/buy/subscribe to certain services/products whether they'll be using their PCs or their mobile devices.

 

Wouldn't you want to be there, in the first row, greeting and welcoming them to your website rather than throwing all your hard work to trash (by focusing exclusively on social media marketing) and so giving the chance to your competitors to welcome them to their own websites? 

Development

We do Web development

Go to our Web development page!

Visit page!

Recommended Stories

Tips
The Ultimate Guide to Canadian Web Accessibility Laws

The Ultimate Guide to Canadian Web Accessibility Laws

  According to a 2017 study, 1 in 5 Canadians aged 15+ has at least one disability. Failing to prioritize web accessibility means ignoring a significant part of the population.  The increasing number of published legal cases around web accessibility shows that making websites accessible for people with disabilities is no longer optional.  The international web standard WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) includes three levels of accessibility compliance: A, AA, and AAA. However, as digital environments continually evolve, these requirements are frequently updated to match increasingly modern needs. The WCAG help companies remove unintentional barriers and reach the widest possible audience.  Accessibility regulations in Canada vary based on: The type of business (public sector company or private organization) The place where your business has been founded The size of your organization Whether your company is country-wide or provincial    So, how can you ensure you meet all Canadian accessibility requirements and provide accessible digital information for all your users? This article dives in the wavy sea of accessibility laws and policies in Canada, so you can determine which ones apply to your business. But first, let's have a look at what makes a website accessible. What is web accessibility? For a website to be accessible, it has to offer people with disabilities and those using assistive technologies easy ways to interact with the entire content found on the site. By supporting your visitors to overcome accessibility barriers in their interaction with your site, you position your brand as a trustful one. Therefore, the benefits of web accessibility extend to your business as well, not only your website's users.  Web content accessibility doesn't just include people with disabilities. It also refers to content that can be easily understood and interacted with by smartphone users, elderly people, persons with low literacy, or those who have low English skills.  An accessible website includes the following: ALT text for all types of images Captions and transcripts for audio and video content to help persons with disabilities, hearing loss, or low English skills understand the information provided.  Link names that contain meaningful and descriptive text which can be easily interpreted by screen readers. Relevant, appropriately formatted headlines that help people with disabilities that use assistive software easily find the information they are interested in. This accessibility step also improves your SEO and SERP rankings.  Use meaningful link texts that clearly describe what the URL i about. Try to include specific keyword and avoid raw URLs.  Clear website instructions that make your users' interactions with your site more straightforward and streamlined.    What is accessible content? Maybe your website is an Ecommerce platform, or it might be a publishing site on various topics. Regardless of its scope, your website has to provide clear, meaningful, and concise content in order to be considered accessible.  As a content editor, you need to pay attention to how you write your copy so that it is always: Perceivable. Website users should easily perceive any piece of content that is presented on the site. Operable. When structured, a site's content should focus on operability. Understandable. Accessible content is comprehensive, concise, and includes meaningful structural elements. Robust. A piece of content is considered robust when it can be easily scanned and interpreted by assistive technologies.  By doing so, your web content will be accessible to all your users (persons with disabilities, smartphone users, elderly people, non-native English speakers, etc.)    What are the most important web accessibility laws in Canada? According to the Canadian Standard on Web Accessibility, all Governments of Canada websites and web applications must conform to WCAG 2.0 Level AA.  Note: This does not apply to any business outside the government.    Provincial regulations The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) established in 2005 was the first provincial accessibility law and is currently the only provincial law with an explicit digital accessibility element.  Public sector organizations, private, and non-profit organizations with more than 50 employees need to comply to AODA regulations. Despite the fact that the AODA does not apply to self-employed individuals that don't have employees, all businesses in Ontario, regardless of size, are urged to consider web accessibility a priority.  The current minimum standard for all public-facing websites is to comply with Level A and all public sector organizations and private businesses with 50+ employees need to be WCAG 2.0 AA accessible.  To maintain their accessibility compliance status, companies are also required to publish a Statement of Accessibility Commitment and Accessibility Policy on their websites. The deadline for this report was set for December 31, 2020, and extended to June 30, 2021.  In regard to companies that own a website with content built by international vendors, the content must comply with local laws and policies. Ontario.ca specifies, “The organization that controls the website must meet the accessibility requirements.”    Accessible Canada Act (ACA) The Accessible Canada Act (ACA) founded in 2019 by the Federal Government intends to create a barrier-free Canada for people with disabilities by 2040. Its futuristic vision and well-established strategies were built with the Canadian Human Rights Act and Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in mind.  These new legislations benefit everyone in Canada, especially people with disabilities, through the proactive identification, elimination, and avoidance of barriers to accessibility in the digital environment. The ACA encourages the Government of Canada to collaborate with stakeholders and persons with disabilities to create new accessibility regulations for private or non-profit organizations, banking, telecommunications, or transportation industries.  To discover the right direction of the ACA development, the Government of Canada asked its citizens what an accessible Canada meant to them. The findings of the report, Creating new national accessibility legislation: What we learned from Canadians, outlines the following key areas where accessibility needed reinforcement: Programs and service delivery Employment Information and communication technology Procurement and transportation The ACA set a new accessibility standard for publishing and promoting digital content, and it received Royal Assent on June 21, 2019.  What lays at the foundation of ACA is eliminating the barriers to accessibility for Canadians with disabilities and help them interact more easily with digital content and technology. One touchpoint of the ACA is the digital experience, which can be made accessible by: Leveraging conformance-facing tools in workspaces (intranets, employee services, internal learning resources) Including conformance of digital tools and content from vendors Installing kiosks, parking machines, or payments machines   How to comply with accessibility laws In today's busy and complex digital landscape, all websites are highly encouraged to take accessibility seriously. Regardless of the regulation, you can ensure that you pass the accessibility test by: Keeping up to date with the latest versions of WCAG, which constantly change to match current technologies and user research. These regulations are established to meet a wide range of needs, including those of people with low vision or neurologic disorders, and to keep pace with the ever-changing mobile landscape.  Leveraging analytics data to help you understand your target audience and their unique needs. Additionally, you can talk and ask for feedback from your active users to better grasp your website's strengths and weaknesses. By gaining awareness of ideas of improvement directly from your audience, you'll deliver more personalized and accessible web experiences. Testing assistive technology tools to gain a more accurate perspective on how you can support, for example, people relying on screen readers. Get in the shoes of your users and become more empathetic to be able to come up with appropriate inclusive solutions to make your site more accessible.    Fines and penalties So, what happens if you fail to comply to the accessibility regulations that apply to your organization?  The fines under the AODA include: Companies can be penalized up to $100,000/day. Individuals and unincorporated businesses can receive fines of up to $50,000/day. Managers and officers in a corporation can be fined up to $50,000/day.   The current enforcement instructions state that businesses are fined larger penalties for their first violation, and, if the lack of compliance continues, these penalties can apply every day.  However, the way these fines are given depends on the impact of the non-compliance and the history of the company or individual that has committed the violation. For minor violations, organizations may be fined as little as $500/day.  The AODA applies to all levels of government, non-profit and private sector companies, but the penalties are currently targeting only organizations with 50+ employees.    How can your business benefit from complying with accessibility laws? Improving your website's accessibility is wise regardless of legal compliance regulations. It is also good for the business. Some key benefits of optimizing your site for accessibility are: Higher traffic rates on your website. By making your site accessible, you are opening the door for a wider range of visitors, which may lead to increased traffic, engagement, and conversion rates. More customers. Web accessibility is all about meeting a wide variety of customer needs, and it can grow your customer base in the long run.  Improved SEO rankings. Some practices to make your site more accessible include writing relevant, concise content, adding ALT-text to images, or selecting simplistic layout designs. Also, these practices are good for SEO, as they increase your SERP ratings and your website's visibility.  Faster page loading speed. By working on your website's accessibility, you also improve your page loading time and the overall user experience.    Conclusion Keeping up with the evolving web accessibility laws in Canada is a must. The next step is to become proactive on your accessibility journey by designing and optimizing your web apps and sites to comply with the rules and regulations of WCAG. This will not only keep you away from lawsuits and penalties, but it will also boost your brand reputation and your business outcomes.  If you need a hand on building websites and web apps that are compliant with the latest Canadian accessibility laws, we are happy to help. Check out our Drupal Website Accessibility services and let's discuss how you can embrace an inclusive mindset that supports all your customers.    Photo credit: Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash. ... Read more
Raluca Olariu / Jul 22'2021
Tips
How to Create Accessible Content More Easily

How to Create Accessible Content More Easily

  Web accessibility heavily relies on developers and designers. They are responsible for building code and specific design patterns to make a website accessible for people with disabilities.  Another way to enhance a site's accessibility is through content. Creating accessible content is paramount when it comes to making a website accessible to screen reader users or visitors that use assistive technologies.  Content editors can give a piece of writing accessibility by: writing relevant, concise, descriptive text links creating easily scannable headings adding alternative texts to every non-text element of the content writing meaningful copy   Regardless of the scope of your website, as a content editor, your mission is to create and optimize every piece of writing on your site with accessibility in mind. This also means putting yourself into the shoes of your audience and thinking from their perspective. You should ask yourself: What do I need in order to have full access to this website? Which features and website tools can help visitors interact with this website more conveniently?  If you use empathy to answer these questions, you'll get closer to understanding your audience. Only then will you be on the right path to building accessible content on your website.    How do you define accessible content? Web content accessibility doesn't just include people with disabilities. It also refers to content that can be easily understood and interacted with by smartphone users, older people, persons with low literacy, or those who have low English skills.  According to the WCAG 2.0 standards, web content is considered accessible if it's: Perceivable. Website users should easily perceive any piece of content that is presented on the site.  Operable. When structured, a site's content should focus on operability. Understandable. Accessible content is comprehensive, concise, and includes meaningful structural elements. Robust. A piece of content is considered robust when it can be easily scanned and interpreted by assistive technologies.    How to create accessible content 1. Use specific link texts. And try to avoid link text like "Click here" as they're not suitable in terms of accessibility. Meaningful link texts convey and clearly describe what the URL is about, making it easier for people who use screen readers to interact with the content.  When using link texts, try to: Avoid raw URLs  Include specific keywords Be short and concise Make sure the link text fits naturally into the content Mention the type and size of files  in case of downloadable links   2. Write clear and simple content.  Using concise language for your website's content benefits multiple groups of visitors, such as: Users with cognitive disabilities Non-native English speakers Screen reader users Busy people who want to quickly go through your copy Depending on the professional level of your content's target audience, you should either avoid or explain technical terms and acronyms. Also, focus on using an active voice that clearly states your ideas and avoid long sentences and idioms.    3. Provide transcripts and captions.  While captions appear on the screen as written text, transcripts are the textual version of the video or audio content provided in a separate document.  Transcripts and captions make websites more accessible for users who: Have hearing issues Have low English skills Can't listen to the content due to environmental reasons Transcripts and captions can be provided for all video and audio content, or they can be done by request. Either way, they are great ways to improve a website's accessibility.    4. Add relevant, appropriately formatted headlines.  People with disabilities that use assistive software need scannable content that allows them to quickly find relevant information instead of wasting time going through the entire chunk of text. Structuring and styling your content in a scannable manner can also enhance your SEO efforts and improves your SERP visibility.   Design your headings with accessibility in mind, and ensure that you use them as structural elements of the content and define its hierarchy. The accessible text needs to provide readers the ability to quickly navigate between the most important sections, and headings are the tool for allowing this.    5. Use ALT text for images.  Whether you have complex images or just decorative images on your site, make them accessible by providing precise and concise ALT descriptions. Screen readers can't interpret non-text content elements, so images without ALT text are useless for screen reader users.  Like headlines, alternate descriptions highly improve your SEO rankings and visibility.  Make sure you use ALT text wisely by: Keeping your description short (under 125 characters) Avoiding images with text like graphs or diagrams    6. Write clear, to-the-point website instructions. Web accessibility is all about easier interactions with digital platforms. People want web experiences that require as few resources as possible on their part. And for online visitors with disabilities, this is more than a demand; it is a necessity.  Therefore, web instructions, error messages, or data formats must be easy to understand, so they can be considered accessible.  Part of creating accessible web content includes paying attention to how you write basic text like website instructions.   Web accessibility is here to stay. Implementing web accessibility into the core of your digital platform is a must. As web accessibility laws are getting more restrictive, brands start to think of making their websites accessible to support the future of their businesses. In an increasingly populated digital landscape, the mindset has to evolve in order to meet the complex needs of a variety of internet users. Companies that don't keep up with these trends will fall behind, and those who take web accessibility seriously will be on the winning side.  As we've seen, accessible content creation is not rocket science and will improve your website in multiple ways. Making your content accessible should be a priority and an essential part of your editorial workflow.  A few practices to remember for optimizing your content are: Always use ALT text for images Provide captions and transcripts for audio and video content Properly structure and format headings   If you need help to make your website more accessible, check out Optasy's Drupal Website Accessibility services. We'll offer our best support for helping you adopt an accessibility-first mindset to your website.    Photo credit: Nick Morrison on Unsplash.   ... Read more
Raluca Olariu / Jul 20'2021
Tips
10 Best Practices for Making Web Icons Accessible

10 Best Practices for Making Web Icons Accessible

  It's no secret that icons are widely used in web design and, to fully reap their potential, they should be truly inclusive. There are multiple ways in which brands can make their website content easy to interact with for people with disabilities, and icon accessibility is one of them. Regardless of the type of web icons you choose—material icons, flat icons, graphical icons, ready-made or fully custom, or on-brand icons—they have to be visible to all users. How can you make icons accessible to everyone? Keep reading to find out: What defines an accessible icon Best practices for making icons accessible Types of web icons and practical approaches for improving their accessibility   What's an accessible icon? Icons that can be understood by all website visitors, no matter what impairments or disabilities they might have, can be considered accessible. To make icons fully accessible to screen reader users, consider following these steps: 1. Focus on noticeability. Whether it is a decorative icon or a standard icon, if it can't be instantly perceivable to all users, it becomes inaccessible. This means that visitors shouldn't have to perform any extra action on your site in order to view the icon.  2. Insert text labels. This is a safety measure worth investing in to ensure your icons are accessible to the widest range of users. To prevent unclear situations from arising, add a text label near any type of graphical icons you use on your site.  3. Consider color contrast. If an icon's color contrast is too low, some users with vision loss might have trouble seeing it. Screen reader users need enough foreground-background color to easily notice your icons.  4. Don't forget about the size. To be properly sized, icons must have around 44x44 pixels. Icon links must be treated with care as, if they're smaller than 44x44 pixels, they may become inaccessible on smaller devices.  5. Make your icons are mouse, touchscreen, and keyboard accessible. If you're thinking of interactive icons, then you need to ensure that users can easily click on them, whether they use a mouse, keyboard, or touchscreen.    Best practices for making icons accessible How can you turn a standard icon into an accessible icon? Here are some useful tips to consider on this journey: Use the most popular pixel measurements and square dimensions. The most frequently used sizes for web icons are:  128x128 16x16 512x512 64x64 256x256 Make linked icons accessible with ALT-text. For example, you can write 'Email us' as the ALT-text near your '@' email icon.  Use more SVG or PNG file formats. It's easier to make icons accessible with SVG icon systems or PNGs, and, as most designers advise, icon fonts should be avoided.  Adjust the icon-background color contrast properly. If you consider adding your web icon to the background, you need to adjust the color contrast accordingly.  Use a visible-hidden class selector for the text accompanying the icon. If you've inserted an explanatory text within your link icon, and you want it to be visible to screen readers only, a visible-hidden class selector is a solution. However, be careful that, by doing so, the click/touch area will be smaller, and some screen reader users might not understand what the icon does.  Insert visible text next to semantic icons. This is another safety measure to ensure that the meaning of your icons is 100% clear to all visitors. While semantic icons are standalone icons that have meaning, the safest way to make them visible to anyone is by accompanying them with visible explanatory text. Make icon fonts accessible. If you do decide to use icon fonts (try to avoid it as we discussed earlier), then add aria-hidden="true" to the element to ensure they are fully accessible.  Don't use ALT-Text to text-based icons. It's easy to see why you should avoid using an ALT text near a text-based icon, as it becomes unnecessary and might even confuse screen reader users.    How to use icons efficiently within apps and online The main goal of web icons is to quickly convey meaning for all types of users. However, if not used accordingly, icons can do more harm than good by being difficult to interpret.  To avoid this, make sure you choose commonly used icons. For example, it is likely that most users will recognize the hamburger icon as the menu and the wheel icon as the settings. That's why, opting for popular, simple icons is more beneficial than using unusual ones.  Another tip for efficiently using icons on your site is to be consistent in doing so. More exactly, give each icon on your website one meaning only. Using the same icon for different purposes will confuse your visitors and alter the user experience.  Also, avoid using small icons as they can be challenging to understand, especially for users with visual impairments. A tiny decorative icon can also prevent users with limited fine motor skills from easily interacting with your site, and can also be hard to click on mobile device screens. After implementing all these tips and best practices, you need feedback to see whether you're going on the right track or not. To ensure that the icon sizes and icon types used on your site are as clear and meaningful as possible for your audience, you need to test them with real end-users.  Remote testing is one approach that can help you easily gather data on whether your icons are accessible or not from a large number of users.   Web accessibility as regulation and necessity The legal requirements around web accessibility have become more complex in recent years. More emphasis is being put on making websites accessible for individuals with disabilities, and the fines for not doing so can be considerable.  Web accessibility is not only beneficial for users, but also for companies. What are the benefits of web accessibility for your business? From increased website traffic and online visibility to improved brand reputation and bigger customer base, the competitive advantages of making your website accessible are multiple.  As the number of internet users is constantly on the rise, businesses need to develop and maintain innovative mindsets that promote inclusion and diversity. Proper access to all elements in a website for all users is no longer optional, but necessary.  The rise of assistive technology usage requires optimized websites that take into consideration the needs of a wide range of internet users with various health conditions. Graphic icons can be a powerful way to enhance accessibility in apps and web pages if they are implemented with care.  This means choosing which accessibility issues to prioritize based on the needs of your audience. Completing an accessibility remediation project requires a deep understanding of how your users interact with your website. When prioritizing, you also have to consider the direction of your business strategy, content, and website functionality.  If you need help choosing the best approach to prioritization or making your website more accessible through optimized icons, drop us a line, and discover our Drupal Website Accessibility services.    Photo credit: Harpal Singh on Unsplash.         ... Read more
Raluca Olariu / Jul 19'2021

Need a new Project?

Dare us to shape and boost your idea(s)!

Start a Project

(416) 243-2431

Contact

(416) 243-2431

Toronto Downtown

First Canadian Place,
100 King St. W. Suite 5700, Toronto

Toronto West

2275 Upper Middle
Rd. E, Suite 101
Toronto

New York

1177 Avenue of the
Americas, 5th Floor,
New York