SEO, SEM, and web accessibility go hand in hand.

Search engine optimization involves getting relevant users to specific pages on your website. But the battle for users is steadily rising. If your website does not perform well in the search engines, you can support it with paid text ads. But did you know that the classic ideas about web accessibility can improve your search engine ranking too? Most users start their search by searching in their favourite search engine by looking for an answer. If your website does not appear on page 1 of the search engine, the user will probably choose to find the answer on another website that is not yours.

A search result in Google can look different in many ways, but the basic version consists of:

• Title

• Description

• Breadcrumb

The title is the text that appears in the browser tab. The title should always include at least one of your keywords. By doing this, you tell Google what your site is about. It would be best to consider having a "modifier", which are words or phrases that make your title stand out from the others. It can, for example, be a call-to-action or, as Lundhede, "FAST DELIVERY". The description cannot be seen on the website itself, but the editor can enter it in the field <meta description="Here is the description that appears in the search result">. The description works as a small introduction to what the user can find on your site. Breadcrumbs are navigation links that tell the user where they are on your site, which subpages have led them to the current page. The breadcrumbs are found by Google itself based on the page structure of your website. As a web editor, you can design your search results and make your pages more attractive for users to click on. The more you do, the better your results will be.

When a blind man can read your page, then can Google too. And the better you structure your content, the easier it is for Google to understand the content.

Using the built-in headlines, you tell your users and Google how your content is organized. Without a special marking, it is difficult for the reader to get an overview of the site, but when it is highlighted correctly, both sighted, partially sighted, and search engines can understand the text.

In the table below, you get an overview of how the text looks completely unformatted, structured, and written in the code.

Links connect websites. That's the core of web technology. The idea is that the word marked as a link should tell you where you are going when you click on the link.

Your visitors are not reading your website. They scan it the same way as you drive past a road sign at 60 km/h. Your message and links should therefore stand out and be easy to decode.

A link with the text "Read more" does not say anything about the content on the next page. It would be best if you instead wrote a telling text, e.g., "When are apples ripe?" or "Read more about when apples are ripe". If you link to articles, it has become best practice to put the link on the headline of the article.

Today, many users use the image search function when searching for an answer on Google. As an editor, you can make your content and photos more accessible.

When you upload an image on your website, give it a good description and an alternative text (alt-text). The alt-text is shown in the browser for those users who have turned off the upload of images or if the user's internet speed is slow. And it is the same text that search engines use to index the images. The text is also read aloud to users with screen readers. Best practice is to describe what is in the picture. Remember, do not start with "Picture of", as screen readers already add this automatically.

The alt-text for this image could be "Filippa apple tree with ripe green and red apples". With the alt-text, you can tell the blind user what is on the image. But you also connect the keywords to what your visitors may type in the image search and then get shown.

If you want to make it even better, make sure to name the image something that indicates what it shows - Apple.jpg is much better than img5427.jpg.

Focusing on web accessibility often reduces the amount of javascript, which makes the pages faster to load and easier to read/index for Google.

When you create text/keyword ads on ads.google.com, you associate keywords and landing pages for each ad. As an editor, you are forced to think about which pages users should land on when searching for a specific keyword and which arguments the website needs to use to be attractive for the chosen keyword.

Jespers Planteskole has made sure to create a text ad targeted at users searching for fruit trees, and when I click on the link, I come to a page with fruit trees. Now, there is a correlation between keywords, ad text, and the page's content on which the user lands. Google defines this as a high-quality ad. 

I imagine that Jespers Planteskole also has ads for:  

• Perennial  

• Hedge plants  

• Bushes  

• Flowers  

• Trees 

And in each of the associated text ads, the keywords are used. On the connected landing page, Jespers Planteskole reuses some of the keywords.

A well-structured process of setting up ads with keywords and adapting landing pages to the keywords will therefore also make the website more focused on organic search results. And actually, you do not have to advertise if you have the mindset when working with your keywords.