Disability SEO Sector Deep Dive

Within the UK, a wide range of charities support disabled people. These charities provide education about disability (developmental disabilities, learning disabilities and complex physical disabilities), as well as practical and emotional support to disabled people and their families.

As part of this audit, we’ve reviewed the organic performance of the following charities:

• Mencap
• Leonard Cheshire
• Community Integrated Care
• National Autistic Society
• Sense
• Autism Initiatives
• Family Fund
• The Disabilities Trust
• Scope

Throughout this report, we have opted for identity-first language, unless we are directly quoting search keywords.

Reflections on our data

Domain Authority

The Domain Authority (broadly an indicator of the overall “strength” of a domain) of charities within this sector averaged 56 with a wide range of DA scores (45-69) across the range of charities.

The National Autistic Society had the highest DA (69), followed by Scope (66) and Mencap (63). Typically, the number of referring domains a site has broadly correlates with a website’s DA; these websites have the highest number of referring domains of all the charities within this sub-sector. Conversely, the charities with lower DAs (Community Integrated Care and Autism Initiatives) also had the lowest number of referring domains.

Core Web Vitals scores

These CWV metrics (which Google considers important in a webpage’s overall user experience) range from 31-71 across the charities we audited. This is a considerable range of scores, spanning from ‘poor’ to ‘needs improvement’.

While Mencap and Scope have relatively high estimated average traffic and many keywords ranking in position one on Google of the charities we audited, they actually have some of the lowest CWV scores.

This suggests that site speed isn’t holding them back from performing well. However, as Google places increasing value on fast loading websites, this is an area for these charities to work on.

Even charities at the top end of the CWV score range don’t have ratings which fall within Google’s ‘good’ categorisation. In order to fall within this category, pages need to score 90+; with the highest score being just 71.

Content strategy

There is considerable variation between charities in the number of #1 non-brand rankings they hold. National Autistic Society is the stand-out charity for this metric, ranking for over 729 keywords in position 1.

Mencap rank for 282 keywords and Scope rank for 216. All other charities included in the analysis rank for under 40 keywords in position 1 (ranging from 1 to 43).

This highlights an opportunity for these charities to devise SEO-informed content strategies, identifying gaps between themselves and similar charities to increase organic traffic by creating new content and optimising existing content.

One example of a charity with an opportunity to focus on the latter of these two approaches is Autism Initiatives, whose About Autism page isn’t ranking on page one of Google for any keywords. The page lacks content and doesn’t target any specific keywords. By contrast, the National Autistic Society has an extensive Advice and Guidance section, which targets a large number of keywords relating to Autism.

This section ranks in position 1 for a range of valuable keywords, including ‘aspergers meaning’, ‘autism and anxiety’ and ‘autism and depression’.

There is an opportunity here for Autism Initiatives to build out an informational content hub. By doing so, they could significantly increase traffic to their site and build awareness of the support they offer to autistic people.

When looking at examples of where charities may be underperforming for core keywords, we found that The Disabilities Trust ranks 3rd for ‘brain injury rehabilitation’ (500 monthly searches). Content that ranks above them has more on-page content about what brain injury rehabilitation is and includes information about things such as timescales for recovery.

This is the same for the keyword ‘physical disability’ (600 monthly searches); The Disabilities Trust rank 8th, but they have no information about what a physical disability is. To rank higher for these keywords, The Disabilities Trust could examine the content that ranks above theirs and understand what additional information to include.

By contrast, Scope’s strength lies in its extensive advice and support section, which ranks on the first page of Google for over 2,000 non-branded keywords. The top-performing pages within the advice and support section are related to money issues and benefits. Example keywords where Scope ranks in position 1 include:

• 'what benefits can i claim for depression and anxiety uk' (3,600 m/s)
• 'disability discount on utility bills' (1,500 m/s)
• 'leaving work due to ill health' (450 m/s)
• 'water bill discount for disabled' (350 m/s)

The top-performing content for Scope differs from Mencap and the National Autistic Society. Mencap has extensive information related to different types of learning disabilities, and this is the content that typically performs well in organic search. The National Autistic Society’s best-performing content is related to areas such as what autism is, autistic behaviours and diagnosis.

This suggests Mencap and the National Autistic Society could examine the content gaps between themselves and Scope and create content to plug these gaps, generate more traffic and provide users with information that is relevant. Conversely, Scope could look at these two charities to identify whether there are opportunities to create additional content for their users.

Non-UK based charities and medical sites

UK charities within the medical space often compete against non-UK-based medical sites in search engine results pages (SERPs), such as Healthline and Mayo Clinic, as well as non-UK-based medical charities. This poses issues as the information may not be accurate for UK audiences.

Scope ranks in position #5 for the keyword ‘usher syndrome’ (250 monthly searches). Other results above are primarily from US-based medical sites. Whilst these could be competitive sites to rank against, we’d recommend exploring the reasons why they are outranking you. If you can show Google that your content is the most relevant to users, you could outrank these sites.

For both Mencap and the National Autistic Society, there’s an opportunity to optimise for specific keywords to outrank non-UK-based charities and medical sites. For the keyword ‘sensory overload autism’ (800 monthly searches), a US autism charity ranks in position one, and a US-based health publication ranks 2nd.

For the keyword ‘symptoms of global developmental delay’ (450 monthly searches), Mencap's page is ranking 6th. Currently, there is no clear 'signs' content on Mencap’s page and therefore, there is an opportunity to compete against Think Psych, a company based in Singapore. It's often the case that 'symptoms' terms are used by searchers, but it may not be appropriate for your organisation to use the word 'symptoms' in the page content. Google understands that 'symptoms' and 'signs' demonstrate the same user intent; so use the language that works best for your organisation. Focus on providing a list like in the example from Think Psych below:

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T)

E-E-A-T is a set of guidelines Google uses to determine content quality. It is not a direct ranking factor but can impact your overall search rankings.

Some of the ways that charities within this sub sector can demonstrate their E-E-A-T credentials centres around using experts in your field to create or review content and ensure content is regularly refreshed and kept up to date.

Demonstrating E-E-A-T to Google is particularly important for ‘Your Money or Your Life’ (YMYL) content. This is Google’s definition of content that, if presented inaccurately, could impact the health, financial stability, welfare or safety of the searcher.

Much of the content this sector’s audience is looking for would fall into the YMYL category. Therefore, in order to rank highly, charities within this sub-sector require a highly demonstrable level of E-E-A-T.

Google recently added the new ‘E’ to these guidelines. It stands for ‘Experience’ and is about demonstrating first-hand experience on your website. Experience can be demonstrated through ‘real life stories’, which we did find evidence of on some of the disability charities websites we analysed. Whilst this type of content will not always target specific keywords, it can support the overall demonstration of Experience on your website.

Additionally, where appropriate, we’d recommend including quotes on your webpages from people using your service. The example below is from the National Autistic Society’s ‘Autistic women and girls’ page. There are multiple quotes demonstrating real experience, and this page ranks well for related keywords, including ‘female autism’ (which has 600 average monthly searches).

Ensuring that content is kept up-to-date also demonstrates E-E-A-T to Google. Include a review process on pages that relate to YMYL content and publish this clearly on your website. Some of the charities within this sub-sector have already implemented this process. Sense has included a ‘last review’ date on their Usher syndrome page and has stated when it will next be reviewed.

Scope also display similar information on their Personal Independence Payment page.

Example pages from other charities which could benefit from review dates include Mencap’s conditions pages and Leonard Cheshire’s content about disabilities in the workplace; this content would be considered ‘YMYL’ by Google.

Another way to demonstrate E-E-A-T includes using experts to author content on your site. Ideally, involve and cite clinicians in content about medical conditions. This can be by using author pages demonstrating author credentials or by creating a page outlining your commitment to ensuring content is high-quality, produced by experts and regularly reviewed and updated.

Lastly, another way to demonstrate E-E-A-T to users and Google is through transparency about how donations to your charity are spent. This is not specific to the Disability sector, but it is an interesting area to highlight. Sense was the only charity within this sector to clearly outline how their donations are spent on a dedicated page:

Accessibility

Ensuring that your website is digitally accessible is particularly important within this sub-sector, considering how easy your website is for everyone to navigate, including those with impairments to their vision, hearing, mobility or thinking and understanding.

Many features of accessibility best practice are also SEO best practice for example WCAG guidelines and SEO best practices state that all images on your site should have an alt attribute. Despite recent, significant AI developments, search engines still can’t inherently understand what an image is, instead relying on alt text for context.

Similarly someone with a visual disability will rely on a screen reader to read out the alt text. We ran some of the charities within this sub-sector through the WebAIM Million, a report on the accessibility of the top 1,000,000 homepages on the internet and found several issues including:

• Sense and Family Fund had missing alt text for images on the homepage; these charities and others within this sub-sector should regularly audit images on their site to avoid this. If images are purely decorative and not important within the context of the page, it is acceptable to have empty alt text (alt="") but ideally, every image should have an alt attribute.
• Many homepages had low-contrast text. Low-contrast text can cause issues for people with visual and cognitive impairments, and therefore we recommend charities within this sub-sector review the use of contrast on their sites.
• The National Autistic Society has considered accessibility features in great detail and use the ReciteMe accessibility toolbar, which provides options for text size, colour contrast and in-built screen reading software. This demonstrates the charity's commitment to making its website accessible for everyone.

Metadata optimisations

The optimisation of metadata (title tags, meta descriptions, H1 tags etc) is perhaps the most understood facet of SEO. We find that many people are aware these elements have a degree of influence on how Google ranks and displays content. Despite that, it’s routinely overlooked to a surprising level.

When reviewing the charities within this sub-sector, we found the majority of charities are missing an opportunity to optimise their homepage title tag, by providing information alongside the organisation name.

Scope has optimised its title tag for ‘disability charity’ and is ranking in position 1 for this keyword:

Other charities are missing out on ‘quick win’ opportunities to optimise for other keywords, including ‘learning disability charity’ and ‘autism charity’, all of which have high average monthly search volumes.

Family Fund are overlooking the opportunity to optimise their homepage for ‘grants for disabled children’. Google is making the connection between this charity and that keyword; the homepage is ranking in position 2 organically:

Google is highlighting words from the homepage meta description, however the page in position 1 will have a higher click through rate than Family Fund.

We also found that all pages on the Autism Initiatives website have the same title tag; ‘Autism Initiatives’. The charity is missing the opportunity to explicitly tell Google what their content is about, which could help to explain why they only hold a single number one ranking position for one keyword.

Another finding from reviewing the titles of pages on charities in this sub-sector relates to Leonard Cheshire’s Facts and Figures page, which isn’t optimised for keywords related to ‘disability statistics’. Although the page is visible for some keywords, it is not ranking in position one, which could be improved with page optimisation.

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