If you go online and search 'Is SEO dead?' you'll find hundreds of links to blogs and articles contemplating the prediction.

However, in contrast to what is being predicted, the roads to SEO will never end.

You may ask how?

Well, till the time SEO continues to complement inclusive web design, SEO is going to stay!

What exactly is inclusive web design?

To put it simply, inclusive web design aims at making websites accessible to everyone. Instead of following a 'one size fits all' user experience policy, inclusive web designs follow a more personalized approach by pleasing a diverse audience.

According to The World Bank Statistics, there are over 1 billion people with disabilities worldwide. To follow an inclusive web design means to make your site accessible to this 1 billion audience.

For example, you must have heard about image Alt text - the box available in the CMS that you can fill up with what you see on the image to make it accessible for visually impaired users. Adding this Alt Text to images on your site is one of the core concepts of inclusive web design and web accessibility.

Now, if you combine inclusive web design with SEO, digital marketers and web designers can seek a competitive edge.

A Holistic Web Design Approach:

Unlike earlier, today's websites are expected to provide the entire user experience instead of catering to only a few parts of it.

Even though user experience has been talked for two decades, designers are still to adopt this holistic approach.

Here's everything that the designer needs to consider -

• Human behavior
• Website accessibility
• Information architecture
• Persuasive web design
• Social media marketing
• Content writing

These considerations are backed by SEO - understanding users and search engine bots by analyzing page performance, browsers, machine learning, operating systems, and much coding!

Therefore, if you want your website to stand out in 2020, you will need to follow this holistic approach and target those people in your marketing strategies whom you wouldn't have considered otherwise.

Note that people use the Internet in ways you may not have thought of before. Not just that, people also want equal access to websites and online activities.

So, be it a person with a disability or not, they want equal opportunity to download documents, experience online pizza ordering, and enjoy online shopping and home delivery.

A blind person who wants to do online shopping for a sighted friend should be able to do so with the help of a screen reader with no barriers.

Role of Technology:

Years of research on understanding how people use the computer, their online behavior, and the information they frequently search for have lead to some exciting advances in machine learning.

For example, Google's prominent algorithm update back in 2019 - Google BERT.

We now know when and how to use customized fonts, color choices, how to execute voice search, structure content on web pages, where to add links and CTAs (Calls to Action), and more.

As SEO managers and web designers, remember that your ultimate job is to help people make informed decisions - whether it begins in a search engine or once they land on your website.

Embrace a Wide Target Market with inclusivity:

Be inclusive in a subtle way!

Inclusive, in general terms, means that everyone is included, regardless of having a disability or not. And so, when you decide to build a website and market it after it goes live, the designers must consider an inclusive design that caters to all!

SEO managers and web designers particularly should create a buyer's persona and behavioral models to target the intended users.

How to Incorporate Inclusive Design:

Internet users are becoming good observers! This means, if your website fails to function equally for everyone, you might become an easy target for social media calling, bad reviews, and even an ADA website lawsuit!

Here are the questions to consider while planning an inclusive website design -

• Can everyone read your webpages on their mobile phone screens?
• Can people with disability or impairment easily understand what to do on your site, how to navigate even if they are in an anxious state?
• Can they understand your website content?

Here are other things you to look out for -

• Revisit the source code - Generic elements like <div>, <p>, <span> might create issues for screen readers. Instead, consider using semantic markup.
• Revisit widgets and plugins ­- Make sure each of them makes sense to your site user and adhere to ARIA techniques.
• Pay attention to wordings - Go with the standard Contact Us, About Us, and other similar pages instead of changing their names to something unique. This is because many people use specific keywords to find these pages. If you change the wordings, it will be impossible for them to locate them.
• Heading Tags - Begin the first heading of your content with a level 1 heading ( <h1> tag), the subsections should be assigned level 2 headings ( <h2> tags), and subsections within H2 tag should be assigned level 3 headings ( <h3> tags ), and so on.
• Content organization - Organizer your content in a sensible flow. Break them into headings, brief summary, bullet points, images and graphics (with alt text), shorter sentences, and small paragraphs.
• Blog summary - Add a blog or article summary at the beginning of every blog post. Summarize it using bullet points and highlight the main points that the article contains.
• PDF Accessibility - You might need to make adjustments with your to make these documents equally accessible to all users, especially those with vision impairments. If you do not have this sorted out yet, you might need PDF remediation to check accessibility PDF and make necessary changes.

Final Words:

With the incoming of the new decade and the way advances are taking place in the industry with user experience in the center of everything, you can expect that in the coming days, inclusive web design will become the only type of web design that people know of.

With the best web design company in India, you can ensure that your website caters to everyone and is inclusive of all people, communities, and people with disabilities. By strategically teaming up SEO managers and web designers, professional web design agencies now produce websites that have incorporated an inclusive web design.

If you are looking to hire the best web design services in Delhi, go for such a web design agency that includes inclusive design and accessibility now, providing holistic user experience.