Defending your topic authority with web accessibility

AI-powered search has changed how content is discovered and consumed. This shift directly affects your brand’s visibility and authority.

Website traffic alone is no longer the best measure of success. The real challenge is proving your authority on the topics that matter most to your audience.

Web accessibility is central to this strategy. If your content isn’t accessible, it isn’t truly discoverable — not for all users, and increasingly not for the AI systems that drive modern search.

This article builds on insights from our webinar, Defending Topic Authority with Accessibility. It features experts including Emily Kumar (Indiana State University), Diane Kulseth (Siteimprove), and Christina Adams (Siteimprove).

If you’d like to explore the full discussion, you can watch the complete webinar here.

This guide shows the direct link between accessibility and SEO authority. You’ll find clear, actionable steps to help your brand stand out, drive engagement, and prove its value in the AI era.

The indispensable role of digital Accessibility

Digital accessibility is no longer optional. It's a fundamental requirement. Global regulations like the European Accessibility Act and Title II in the U.S. demand that accessibility be front and center. But beyond compliance, this is about user experience (UX) at its core. Your goal is to ensure content is accessed easily and efficiently by every user. This focus on the user is what search engines now prioritize.

Consider the technical bedrock:

• Semantic HTML and Heading Structures: These aren't just developer niceties. They are crucial for accessibility and empower search engines to accurately parse and understand your webpage's content. Proper heading use (H1, H2, H3) creates a logical content hierarchy that benefits both human readability and machine crawling.
• Alternative Text Descriptions: Every image needs descriptive alt text. This ensures users relying on screen readers grasp your visual content, and it provides invaluable context for search engines.
• Machine-Parsable Content: The shared objective of both accessibility and SEO is to create content that is clearly understood by humans, search engines, and AI tools.

Key Takeaway: Prioritizing accessible design from the start lays a stronger, more efficient foundation for all your SEO initiatives.

How accessibility supercharges online discoverability

Creating good user experience and accessible websites consistently leads to strong SEO practices. The connections are abundant.

Write for your real audience, not just internals:

Many organizations fall into the trap of writing for an internal audience, neglecting who the content is truly for. This often results in:

• Higher reading levels than necessary.
• Large, daunting blocks of text and overly complex sentences.
• Internal jargon or acronyms that confuse external users.

Actionable clarity for comprehension:

To improve clarity without "dumbing down" your content, focus on structural adjustments.

• Break up dense paragraphs with bullet points or shorter sentences.
• Think about the specific terms your target audience uses when searching for information.
• Scannability is key. Even for complex topics, clear, digestible pages improve understanding for everyone.

Example: Indiana University renamed "IU Halls of Residence" to "IU Housing". This wasn't just clearer; it was significantly more searchable and understandable for prospective students and their families.

Intuitive navigation and transparent links:

• User-Centric Navigation: Your site's navigation should reflect your actual content hierarchy. Avoid internal terminology that confuses external users. An intuitive navigation helps both humans and search engines discover more of your content.
• Clear Page Titles: These improve click-through rates and directly support SEO relevance. They also ensure users immediately understand what they're reading and why they're there.
• Descriptive Link Text: Links should clearly indicate what happens when clicked. This is vital for users employing assistive technologies and contributes to better keyword relevance for search engines.

Accessible structures fuel AI understanding:

• Structured Content: Accessible page structures are essential for Google and AI to properly understand your content's context. This is critical for machine readability. You can learn more about it in this post on SEO and accessibility.
• Text Alternatives: Captions, descriptions, and full transcripts for multimedia content are not just for accessibility; they provide rich data for search engines to use. They also cater to users who prefer consuming content in various formats.

Key Takeaway: Design for the user, and SEO benefits follow. A clean, easily navigable experience, built on accessible principles, promotes sharing and strengthens your online credibility.

Reclaiming topic authority in search and AI

If you’ve been in SEO for the past year, you've noticed major shifts. With the rise of AI engines like ChatGPT, much information can now be accessed outside your website, often directly in chat interfaces. For example, users can get university tuition figures or information on paying a water bill without ever visiting your site.

This means a lot of top-of-funnel traffic is starting to disappear. Those easy inquiries are being answered elsewhere. While conversions might not be decreasing, the user's entry point to your site is shifting lower in the funnel.

The urgent need for authority:

It's now crucial to establish yourself as the authority on your topic.

• Brand Citations Matter: Beyond traditional links, how your brand is cited elsewhere is vital for AI search. Monitor mentions and ensure positive sentiment.
• Elevate with Experts: AI lacks real-world experience. Leverage your subject matter experts within your content. This elevates you above the noise, especially as more organizations turn to AI for content generation.

Actionable steps for AI search dominance:

• Audit AI Search Results: Start checking how your topics appear in AI chats and search engines. Try common audience questions. Does your brand appear, or do aggregators like U.S. News & World Report dominate? Are Google's AI Overviews displaying your content?
• Answer Audience Questions Directly: Identify the specific questions your audience is asking. Integrate these question-based keywords directly into your pages, perhaps in headings or dedicated FAQ sections.

Managing archived content: the PDF predicament:

Many organizations, especially in higher education and government, hold vast archives of PDFs.

• The Problem: Historic PDFs, if outdated, can confuse AI and dilute your content authority. AI tools can parse PDFs, but webpages are often easier for them to process.
• The Solution:
  • Prioritize HTML: If a PDF contains outdated information, migrate it to live HTML content on your website and implement redirects.
  • Tag Your PDFs: If you must keep PDFs, ensure they are tagged PDFs. Tagging provides semantic meaning, helping search engines and AI categorize the content.
  • Delete Irrelevant Archives: My favorite PDF strategy is simple: delete them if they are no longer relevant. This removes outdated information from the content pool, preventing confusion and bolstering your authority. Google Search Console also offers removal tools for PDFs you no longer want indexed.

Key Takeaway: Traffic numbers alone don't define success anymore. Focus on conversion rates, user engagement, and ensuring your brand is the definitive, trustworthy source for information, especially for AI tools.

Empowering teams and improving collaboration

Collaboration is often a challenge. Many teams are small, "mighty" groups wearing multiple hats, or they operate in complete silos. This breeds inefficiency and costly rework.

Why collaboration is non-negotiable

When accessibility and SEO teams join forces, the value is undeniable.

• Early Integration: Navigation, content structure, and design decisions should involve both accessibility and SEO expertise from the initial planning stages.
• Unified Strategy: If you’re a UX designer, pull in your SEO person. If you're an SEO, bring in your accessibility expert. This unified front amplifies your message and makes your work more critical to the overall strategy and performance.
• Avoid Costly Rework: Addressing SEO after web design often costs significant time and resources. The same goes for accessibility. If no one can find your accessible, technically perfect site, your efforts are wasted. You need both.

Rethinking KPIs for the AI era

Since traffic isn't the sole metric, what should you track?

Conversion metrics to track

Use tools to visualize and track how users move through your site from entry points to conversion pages. Optimize these user journey paths.

Some organizations are implementing an "effort score" to measure the ease with which users navigate a page or complete a journey. Less effort indicates higher engagement.

The accordion debate

While accordions save space, they present usability and discoverability challenges.

• AI Visibility: AI agents may struggle to access information hidden within accordions without direct interaction.
• User Experience: Users often scan pages, potentially missing content within collapsed accordions. Forcing interaction can also introduce accessibility barriers.
• Best Practice: If content is important enough for an FAQ, it should be immediately visible on the screen. For longer answers, link out to more comprehensive pages.
• Scannability: Clear, bold headings for each question allow for quick scanning, ensuring users find what they need without extensive clicking. Assistive technologies can also quickly navigate via structured headings.

Key Takeaway: Effective collaboration from the outset streamlines workflows, ensures consistency, and maximizes the impact of your digital marketing efforts.

Key takeaways for digital marketing leaders

• Accessibility directly enhances topic authority. This is no longer a question; it’s a proven fact.
• Show your authority through original, educational content. Leverage your internal experts. Their experience is what sets you apart from AI-generated content. And always use language appropriate for your audience, not just internal stakeholders.
• Collaborate to plan your content. Ensure accessibility and SEO are discussed at the drawing board. This makes your content findable and accessible from day one, saving time and resources.
• Establish your topical authority for AI search. As AI models learn, being the trusted, authoritative source will ensure your brand is cited and your information appears prominently.

It’s time to take control. The digital landscape is shifting, but by prioritizing both accessibility and strong SEO, you can defend your brand’s topic authority, drive meaningful engagement, and position your organization for sustained growth in the AI era.