Balancing SEO and web accessibility
Why natural search engine traffic is best
The reason why search engine traffic is of such a quality is because the visitor has an information need that your site can fulfil. Rather than untargeted/blind visits, people who find you naturally through search engines have come across your pages because of a declared information requirement. If you manage to answer their question then you may well have a returning visitor on your hands - the most valuable kind.
The importance of web accessibility
It's important to help ensure your site works cross browser, cross platform and for those who have a disability (using screen readers etc). Search engines reward high levels of accessibility because following standards means that the spiders are able to index your content more efficiently so it's win-win.
Keyword stuffing
Something I see done every now and again is stuffing your content with keywords - while this is a matter of personal preference there's one thing that you should adhere to maintain. When you have images it's tempting to stuff the alt and title tag elements with keywords to help influence your search engine results. However, for accessibility reasons if the image has any text in it then you really should have the alt and title tags reflect that. It may really help your SE traffic by loading keywords into the images but it's not good practice. True the search engines can't determine what is in the image to decide whether you're telling the truth or not so it's up to you...
Just a short submission to highlight a common SEO practice that breaches accessibility and that you should be responsible and follow guidelines. Of course if the image has no text associated with it then I see no harm in entering some "related" keywords into the alt/title tags.
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