- From: Ali Zaidi <ali.m.zaidi@gmail.com>
- Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 11:09:28 +0000
- To: public-comments-wcag20@w3.org
- Message-ID: <139ddf870512200309r4a7187ecn79073e8d41e1fd79@mail.gmail.com>
Hi, I refer to: http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20-20051123/Overview.html#navigation-mechanisms-skip I am just a little concerned about the wording that is used to skip navigational elements to get to the main content. It is common to use "Skip to content", "skip navigation" and similar othe phrases. However the problem I find with this approach is that it is not Search Engine Friendly. Would it not be better to encourage developers to use more descriptive text that is different for each page. For example if there is a webpage about say "Assistive Technologies" and the main content begins with a h1 header with the words "Assistive Technologies", would it not be better to use the words: "Skip to Assistive Technologies Content" or "Go to Assistive Technologies Content"? I say this because from an SEO perspective the target keywords of a page should be higher up on the page. To illustrate the problems faced by Search Engines please see the following search queries entered into Search engines where I am looking for information on "Skip to Content" issues: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=skip+to+content&meta= http://www.search.com/search?tag=se.fd.box.main.search&q=skip+to+content http://search.lycos.com/default.asp?loc=searchbox&tab=web&query=skip+to+content http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=skip+to+content&FORM=QBHP http://www.altavista.com/web/results?itag=ody&q=skip+to+content&kgs=1&kls=0 http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=skip+to+content&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8 As you can see hardly any of the search results returned in the above search engines for the term "Skip to content" return pages about "Skip to content". It seems clear to me that any link that has generic words for the link text such as "Skip to content" or "Click Here" is not necessarily best practice. What do you think? I would love to recieve your opinions. Kind Regards, Ali Zaidi, Final Year BSc (Hons) Web Development Student University of Teesside, UK
Received on Tuesday, 20 December 2005 11:09:46 UTC