PHP, Accessibility, and Search Engines: Enemies no longer!

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Presented by:	Aaron Wormus
Date:	May 16, 10:15 - 11:15
Location:	Track #3

There is a lot of talk about search engines and how to create well-indexed sites that can utilize the power of Google to bring you more visitors and increase the revenue of your online business venture. When people talk about Search Engine Optimization, they should be talking about accessibility—and not just making your site accessible to mouse clicking-humans, but giving enough semantic information for search engine spiders to “understand” the content of your pages, as well as giving screen readers information they need to enable easy browsing through your site.

In this session, we will look at several websites through the eyes of a Screen Reader and a Search Engine Spider. We will discuss subtle changes that can be made to both the structure of the site (paths, session handling), and semantic information which can be provided through the front end. We will also examine Ajax and how you can use it in a way that does not alienate non-human browsers.

Finally, we will look at Web services provided by various companies and how the integration of these tools into your site can provide highly dynamic contextual information, which will enhance the quality of your site for search engines and human visitors, alike.