OMA Comp
Web Design & Development
Last week, members of our OMA Comp team attended a webinar put on by Healthgrades to keep us on the cutting edge and to make certain we are on top of the current trends and recommended implementations regarding online reputation for our medical professional customers. OMA Comp continually challenges ourselves to be on the forefront and an industry leader so that we can provide the best services for our clients.
The Americans with Disabilities Act was introduced in 1990 as a civil rights law to prohibit discrimination of citizens with disabilities. The evolution of this act now extends to the internet and for a good reason; accommodating your website for people with disabilities makes it easier to access and understand. Here are a few recommendations we have for updating your website around this idea.
What Is Web Accessibility?
Similar to how a wheelchair-bound individual finds it challenging to enter a building with stairs as the only means of entrance, websites can be difficult to interpret without specific components. Web accessibility is the general readability and interpretation quality for users with audible and visual impairments to be able to understand the information of the website. Government, Business, and Non-Profit organizations are all required by the ADA to maintain strict compliance across platforms, so what does this mean for your website?
Recommendations
Provide a text equivalent to important images and graphics. Screen readers can convey meaning without being obtrusive to the overall web experience. Documents should be made available in formats other than PDF. Although they look great, screen readers have a hard time deciphering PDF content; when uploading these documents – pair them with a plain-text version.
Check the font style and text color for readability. Low contrast against plain color and image backgrounds makes reading challenging and is unsightly in general. For multimedia, ensure captions and audio descriptions are made available for people with hearing problems. Descriptive audio also accommodates for users with low vision.
Use Descriptive HTML tags so online forms can be accurately used. This simple behind the scenes work makes a huge difference for people with disabilities. Keep in mind this is not a comprehensive list, rather these are common items we have observed that can be easily updated.
Why Should I Update
ADA compliance should be taken seriously. Once it is mandated, your website will need to be made compliant. ADA compliance for websites is beginning for banks and other financial institutions and then will be moving to medical and other businesses. Contact OMA Comp to learn more.
There are many things influencing SEO this year, but one of the biggest rising stars is the featured snippet. You have likely come across this search engine feature at least once or twice in the recent past. A snippet is a piece of content taken from a website that’s presented on the search results page.
Anatomy of a Featured Snippet
What makes a featured snippet different from results on a search page? They are reversed from the usual display format. A section of content is displayed at the top, sometimes with a related image. The page name and URL appears below.
Featured snippets are prominently displayed, so that they are easy for the internet user to see before delving into the search results. The idea is that the snippet appears when Google believes that it will provide a better answer based on the search text.
Why Are Featured Snippets Important?
Voice searching is on the rise, with one in five mobile queries utilizing voice. This has a direct impact on the featured snippet, which is often returned as a response to questions asked using voice search. A recent study conducted by Stone Temple Consulting included 1.4 million queries. Approximately 30% of those queries were shown a featured snippet. The trend has been moving steadily upward since at least December of 2014.
Optimizing Your Featured Snippet
The highest ranking pages tend to get more snippet results, so the better your SEO is, the higher your chances will be of getting featured. Multiple studies have revealed that long-tail keywords are more likely to produce a featured snippet. If you need help increasing your chances of getting featured on Google, contact OMA Comp today. We can help you get noticed with improved SEO strategies.
Google releases both a security update and user enhancements for the Chrome Browser for Windows, Mac, and Linux. This newest version addresses some of the current vulnerabilities to help reduce the ability of intruders/hackers meaning harm. One of the major new enhancements for the user is receiving answers to your questions in the address bar without loading a website.
How to update?
It takes commitment to become Michigan’s premiere website and marketing agency. Our success stems from our skilled staff. We focus diligently on the well-being of our clients and do not want to forget to acknowledge the significant contributions and importance of our phenomenal staff.
Labor Day reminds us to honor the people who strengthen our nation and help it prosper. We would like to send a big thank you to our employees to all workers everywhere. Have a happy Labor Day weekend!
RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, is a type of web feed that provides updates to content. The feed consists of a text file that allows subscribers to see content for a period of time after its updated. Does having an RSS feed on your website boost your SEO?
Google Weighs In On RSS Feeds and SRP Ranking
When it comes to your search results page ranking, RSS feeds won’t help according to John Mueller, webmaster trends analyst at Google. A question appeared on his Twitter feed on April 10th, 2018 asking if RSS feeds help rank better in Google. John’s straightforward response was a simple “No.” The question was geared toward news websites, but the answer applies to all sites.
This isn’t new, but it is something that many website owners did not know in 2018. Mueller participated in a video hangout with blogger Jennifer Slegg back in 2015. He is quoted as stating “if you are looking for a ranking boost by having an RSS feed, that’s not going to happen.” He went on to explain that “there’s no direct ranking boost for the website itself.”
RSS Feeds and Search Engine Indexing
The RSS feed is considered a technical tool, so it is still beneficial to have on your site. It can assist with page crawling and indexing. That means new content could be indexed faster and more accurately with an RSS feed. While it doesn’t provide a direct boost to your search engine results page ranking, it can still help. If you have questions about SEO or RSS feeds, contact OMA Comp to learn more.
OMA Comp
318 Woodlawn Avenue
Royal Oak, MI 48073-2615
Phone: 248-616-3057
Fax: 248-232-0075