Bake It In, Don't Bolt It On: SEO, Accessibility, and Findability for Your Website

In this session for beginners or more advanced developers, you'll learn how best practices for accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO), as implemented in the early stages of development, can improve (1) your site's chance of being found, and (2) guide the next iterations in your development cycle.

In this 30 minute session, we'll begin with the connections between accessibility, search engine optimization, and how this relates to the findability of a website. Next, we'll discuss the key HMTL implementations you can make to increase your site's findability; specifically, we'll move beyond the myths surrounding single keywords and look at how natural language should inform your work. We'll also look at best practices for leveraging the affordances of specific tags.

Finally, we'll consider ways to truly "bake in" accessibility and SEO right at the beginning of a project. We'll discuss the upfront work and project asset compilations that will make your work easier and guide iterative development.

Attendees will take away information about basic SEO and accessibility considerations for initial site development; as well, attendees will learn why a "bolt it on" method is least optimal and how good planning makes future site work easier.