With the Ever Growing Forest of WebPages Online, Page Themes Provide Search Engines and Users with Much Needed Direction

Do your pages have a theme? Or are they just a bunch of random stuff you thought your customer base would find interesting? For the sake of your business, marketing efforts, and search engine optimization performance, you’re going to want to address this question and keep it top of mind.

What do we mean by theme?

A theme is the basic idea that there are certain goals and content associated with each page of a website. By specifying a theme for each page it allows you to focus on keywords, calls to action, internal and external linking, as well as video and images which are concisely aligned with your navigation and search engine efforts.

Why do your pages need a theme for SEO?

In the case of search engine optimization it is absolutely vital that each of your pages have a clear and concise theme. Think of it as a mission statement. What is that page trying to accomplish, what is its value to the world, how will that page serve your customer base? Once you have asked yourself these questions you can discover keywords which best represent the page’s mission. Adding those keywords in the right places lets the search engine know the purpose of the page you have created, and thus, allows you to rank for the terms you have specified.

Why do your pages need a theme for Navigation?

Associating a theme with each page is also vital for creating both SEO friendly and a user-friendly navigation, the value of which should never be overlooked. Establishing a theme for each page allows you to create a hierarchy of products or content. Each of those pages support each other and link together in a way which allows users to easily find what they are looking for, and search engines to easily crawl your site. The final result of this strategy will be a hub structure that you and your company will be proud of, and that search engines and users will respond well to.

The Final Word on Themes, SEO and Navigation

Without creating a clear meaning for each page on your website not only will your search engine optimization efforts suffer, but you will also establish a less ideal navigation. In addition, you will not create the specific keyword relationship needed to establish a focused and sound internal linking structure. The larger your website gets, the more important it becomes to ensure you are creating specific and clear messages for each page. By keeping this in mind and executing effectively, your online business will prosper and your customer base will view your site in a positive light.

Have a question about creating themed pages? Comment below!

That being said, it’s great to see others getting on the Accessibility band wagon. Aaron Shears at Search Engine Watch wrote a great blog about it the other day, and even gave SEO Inc. a shout out:

More than ever, it’s so very important that a Web site be created for everyone, including those who are blind or disabled. To understand more about these issues, visit the Americans with Disabilities Act Web site, in order to gain a larger perspective on issues and ways you can help.

Actually, other than myself, the only firm that has firsthand experience with this type of optimization is SEO Inc. The owner’s daughter is blind and she has provided experience and insight that no other search firm can offer.

For more information on the web accessibility practices at SEO Inc, click here. SEO Inc. is the first and only SEO Company in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential.

Search Engine Optimization Inc.’s CEO, Garry Grant, along with SEO Inc.’s Senior Engineer Steve Tchorzewski, will be discussing practical web accessibility solutions for persons with disabilities and the real world benefits of addressing these issues at this year’s International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference put on by California State University Northridge’s Center on Disabilities. They will be speaking at The Renaissance Montura Hotel – International C Room on Saturday, March 21, 2009 9:20 – 10:20 AM.

Brad will be presenting in Theater B of the SMX Theater on the Expo Hall floor at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Wednesday, February 11 at 1:40 pm. All SMX attendees are invited to attend and hear him discuss various aspects of SEO with an emphasis on web accessibility for the visually impaired.

SMX West began today, February 10 and will be going through February 12. It will feature three days of sessions, keynotes, networking activities, special educational presentations and meals. SMX is where experienced SEO and search engine marketing professionals go to learn everything that they need to know about Internet marketing. There are sessions for everyone ranging from beginners to the extremely advanced.

SEO Inc. is also exhibiting at SMX West. Come visit our fun and friendly staff at booth #323 at the SMX West Expo Hall.

The settlement, filed in the U.S. District Court of Northern California, requires that visually impaired users who depend on screen-reading software to use Target.com “may acquire the same information and engage in the same transactions as are available to sighted guests with substantially equivalent ease of use.”

Bruce Sexton, one of the original named plaintiffs, says that the settlement “marks a new chapter in making Web sites accessible to the blind…” and commends Target for its efforts thus far. NFB President Marc Maurer hopes “other businesses providing goods and services over the Internet will follow Target’s example.”

Well, if this lawsuit is any indication of things to come; other businesses had better follow targets example by making sure people with disabilities can use their website! Unless losing multimillion dollar class action lawsuits is part of their business plan.

The Problem
Conventional wisdom has always been that using Flash to make a website is a huge SEO No-No, and here’s why: When a search engine crawler comes to a web page, its mission is to read the text and follow the links to the other pages on the site. If the only thing on the page is an embedded flash object; then there is nothing for the crawler to read and no where for it to go. Ouch!

The Solution
Write the Flash object onto the page using JavaScript and replicate all the links and content that appear in the Flash version using regular HTML within the noscript tag! As long as the user has JavaScript enabled, they will see the Flash version of the site, and the search engines will be able to crawl through all the content and links found in the noscript tag. And there you have it — SEO friendly Flash!

To see how to embed Flash objects using JavaScript please refer to example B in this “Making Flash Accessible” document published by the W3C.

The Conclusion
To be clear I still don’t recommend making entire websites out of Flash, but the above technique can be used, not only as a way to make a Flash site SEO friendly, but also in order to make them much more accessible to users with disabilities. I have always advised people that Flash elements are great as a part of the page, as long as they are not the whole page. I still stand by that advice and feel that this technique is more of a Band-Aid than a cure (for many reasons) and should really only be used as a last resort for when a designer or a client (or both) have fallen in love with their wonderful Flash website and won’t listen to reason, or as an alternative to completely rebuilding a website in the name of SEO.

A Word of Caution
If you are going to use this technique I would advise not deviating at all from what has been outlined here, as there are other similar things floating around out there that basically amount to what is known as cloaking, a black hat SEO technique that could get a website banned. I recommend that you consult with us SEO Inc 760-929-0039 to insure that this is correctly implemented.

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At one point the moderator took an audience poll using clapping instead of hand raising so all the visually impaired people in the room could gauge the response as well. He asked “How many blind people do we have in the audience?” About a third (if not more) of the people clapped. “How many people who can see?” The other two thirds clapped. “How many people who can see use a blackberry?” The room broke out in applause. “How many blind people use a blackberry?” One guy clapped. “How many people use social networking sites like Facebook?” Again lots of applause from the audience. “How many blind folks on Facebook?” The same guy clapped again. “How many people who can see on Second life?” 10 or so people clapped. “How many blind people on Second life?” No one clapped. “How many iPhone/iPod users who can see?” Lots of applause. “Blind users?” None. You start to get the picture.

All the cool new stuff that has quickly been integrated into the lives of people who can see over the past 5 or so years is almost totally inaccessible to all the people in the blind community. So, much of the discussion after that focused on what companies are doing to remedy that problem. IBM and Microsoft espouse standards for software that is low-or-no vision friendly, but note that it is a bit of a delicate dance to coordinate the launch of their software so that it will be compatible with the latest versions of software being produced by the numerous third party companies who create accessibility software. AT&T pointed out that while they do sell cell phones that are considered highly accessible to those with disabilities, they don’t actually manufacture the phones they sell, so it is difficult for them to integrate accessibility features along with the new technology being offered with their phones, such as GPS.

It was great to see a collaborative effort between competitors such as AT&T, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and IBM discussing the shift in technology that needs to be made to allow all people equal access to the latest and greatest innovations in technology. Yahoo!, perhaps the most forward thinking of all the panelists championed making web pages so that everyone could use them – not just people who are blind, but everyone – and isn’t that the goal after all?

to giant embossers like these:

that print braille.

As for my main objective of seeing what’s new in web accessibility, I was introduced to the W3C’s new ARIA guidelines (Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suite) for web applications. As expected these guidelines are pretty complicated, so it will definitely take some time to get familiar with them. The state of Illinois has some laws that go above and beyond the Americans with Disabilities Act called the “Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act,” and the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champain was there offering info pamphlets and a Firefox tool bar that can help ensure that a website meets accessibility standards.

Speaking of Firefox they were there too!

Promoting all the new accessibility features that will be rolled out in Firefox 3.

I really enjoyed my time at the conference and I am really looking forward to seeing more web accessibility developments in the future.

There are tons of SEO friendly menu solutions out there, from basic CSS based menus that simply show the sub-menu links when the user mouses over a top level link, to fancy JavaScript driven menu solutions that show the sub-menu links by doing all kinds of animation effects such as sliding, fading, and re-sizing. Most menus are fine for SEO as long as the CSS/JavaScript acts on regular HTML links that the search engines can crawl. However, very few menus are created with visually impaired users in mind, so it is important to research and choose a menu solution carefully.

To ensure that a menu is accessible to the visually impaired, you want to avoid using “display:none” or “visibility:hidden“ to initially hide sub-menu links. Whatever is contained in elements that have either of these two CSS properties applied to them will be ignored by screen reading software with the logic being that if visual users don’t get to see those links, why should they be read to non-visual users? The flaw there is that visual users have a way of accessing those links by hovering over the menu, and visually impaired users don’t. The solution is to use a menu ( PS: Hint Hint – SEO Inc can implement this!) that initially positions the sub-menu items off the page, and then back on the page when the menu is activated. That way screen reading software won’t get tripped up, and will read all the links in the menu to visually impaired users.