Strengthening Security, Accessibility, and SEO for American Councils

American Councils for International Education relies on its website to support global academic and cultural exchange programs, making digital trust, accessibility, and performance essential. While the site continued to function on the surface, underlying technical issues were quietly limiting its effectiveness and introducing long-term risk.

The organization needed a clear understanding of its site health and a path forward that addressed security, accessibility, SEO, and performance together—not in isolation. Rather than short-term fixes, American Councils required a strategic technical partner to identify foundational issues and establish a sustainable framework for ongoing improvement.

Hidden Technical Debt Impacting Search Visibility

A comprehensive audit revealed a high volume of 4xx errors, broken internal links, and non-secure URLs. These issues were wasting search engine crawl budget, signaling low site quality, and preventing valuable content from being efficiently indexed.

Accessibility Gaps and Compliance Risk

Accessibility testing uncovered structural and content-level issues that created barriers for users relying on assistive technologies. Missing alt text, improper heading hierarchy, and unclear link text limited usability and introduced potential regulatory and legal exposure.

Inconsistent Security Standards

Critical security measures, including HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), were not in place. Without enforced HTTPS connections and modern security headers, the site lacked the protections users expect from a trusted, mission-driven organization.

Performance Limitations at the Foundation Level

Core Web Vitals scores indicated that performance optimization efforts would be ineffective until foundational errors were resolved. Poor structural integrity and unresolved technical issues were contributing to slower load times and increased user abandonment.

Technical SEO Cleanup

Our technical SEO audit revealed a high volume of 4xx errors, broken internal links, and non-secure URLs that were signaling low site quality to search engines. To resolve these issues, we:

• Fixed persistent 403 and 404 errors
• Repaired broken internal links across content types
• Resolved all non-secure URL issues
• Updated semantic search results markup to improve structural accuracy

These improvements reduced technical debt and ensured that search engines could efficiently crawl and prioritize valuable content.

Accessibility Improvements

Accessibility was a critical focus of this engagement. Using WAVE testing results, we performed a structured accessibility remediation across the site, including:

• Ensuring proper heading hierarchy and sequential structure
• Adding descriptive alt text to all relevant images
• Replacingvague link text with clear, functional descriptions

These changes moved the site closer to WCAG compliance while significantly improving usability for visitors relying on assistive technologies.

Security Enhancements

To strengthen trust and meet modern security expectations, Inclind implemented HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) and additional security headers. Enforcing HTTPS at the browser level protects users from downgrade attacks and ensures all traffic remains encrypted.

This foundational security work supports American Councils’ responsibility to safeguard users while reinforcing the credibility of the platform.

Performance Readiness

While Core Web Vitals optimization was not the first step, it was a key outcome of resolving foundational issues. By fixing crawl errors, non-secure URLs, and semantic inconsistencies, we established the prerequisites required for meaningful performance improvements.

We also submitted a complete sitemap to Google Search Console to establish clear baselines and support future performance monitoring.