However, now that the majority of the globe has access to high-speed internet, websites are flooded with photographs, movies, and other forms of material. In fact, many people would rather watch other forms of media than reading for long periods of time.
Never
before in the history of the internet has having a variety of content types
available on your site be more crucial. It is no longer profitable to
concentrate simply on the written word. Even if SEO is driving a substantial
amount of your traffic, it's still critical to have a diverse range of media
formats on your site. While Google still favors written content, it also favors
other forms of media on your sites, such as photographs, videos, and downloads,
as do your visitors.
Some
of the advantages of including various types of media on your website are as follows:
• You'll get more love from Google.
• Your visitors will be more likely to return.
• Your visitors will be more engaged and spend more time on your website as a result of your efforts.
• You'll get traffic from places like Pinterest that you wouldn't get from just written material.
If
you're having trouble ranking and attracting traffic, it's possible that your
content strategy is out of date. Writing hundreds (if not thousands) of basic
articles and obtaining a large number of high-quality backlinks is no longer a
viable strategy for ranking well. It would most likely take years of hard labor
to achieve this, and who wants to wait that long for results? Things could have
changed again by then, and you could be back at square one.
The two most important criteria in swiftly outranking your competition are to employ several sorts of media (such as images, videos, and downloads) instead of just text, and to make sure your content is using the most up-to-date SEO tactics.
This tutorial will teach you about some of the different sorts of media you should
put on your website, as well as how to make sure you use the most up-to-date
SEO tactics while creating that content.
So let's get this party started.
Images
Apart
from text, images are the most frequent kind of media on the internet. They are
modest in file size, especially when compared to videos, and they can have a
significant influence on traffic as well as user interest and interaction.
Images
are beneficial in a variety of ways. They can be useful for drawing attention,
demonstrating steps in a process, and showing people examples, in addition to
making a website more engaging and aesthetically pleasing. They can also be
useful for promotional purposes (such as pinning on Pinterest) and for drawing
attention, demonstrating steps in a process, and showing people examples.
Animated
bullets, graphical divider bars, and wacky background pictures were all the
rage a few years ago. Such photos are now frowned upon since they make a
website appear amateurish and out of date.
Photographs
are becoming increasingly prevalent these days.
Include
photos for the sake of including photos, but not only for the sake of including
photos. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a blogger include a bunch of
photos that have nothing to do with the piece they're writing just to add some
visual interest and it irritates me.
Consider
the following scenario: you've produced an essay about email marketing.
Screenshots of the many services you're discussing, as well as photographs that
teach users how to complete a certain job that they might not understand
otherwise, are examples of images you might wish to add.
Generic photographs of mail or mailboxes, generic @ sign graphics, and random pictures of email messages are all images you should avoid using.
The sole exception is if you require a featured image for your blog but don't have
any specific photographs that relate to your post. In that scenario, you could
use a single generic image, but it should be as near to your subject matter as
possible.
If
you use photographs on your website or blog, make sure they're optimized for
Pinterest, as this can be a significant source of traffic.
Image Search Engine Optimization
Many people are unaware that SEO can be applied to photographs, but if done effectively, images may bring in a large quantity of traffic. To get the most out of each image, it's critical to use appropriate SEO strategies on all of them.
You
may incorporate SEO information in photos in a variety of areas.
• The name of the file
•
Captions
•
Alternate text
Filenames
for Images
Let's
imagine you want to include a photo of a dog groomer in your article about how
to become a dog groomer. Your image should be named something like
dog-groomer.jpg. This allows search engine crawlers to “see” your image, as
well as allowing you to appear in a Google Images search, potentially resulting
in increased visitors. After all, it's one more space in the Google search
results that you could claim.
Captions
Captions
are short pieces of text that appear behind photos in books, periodicals, and
on the internet. They're excellent when they're actually useful, but because
they're visible to visitors right away, they shouldn't just be used to stuff
keywords in.
Did
you know that according to KissMetrics, captions beneath photos are read 300
percent more than the body copy?
It may be hard to believe, but captions can have a significant impact. As a result, you can utilize them not just for SEO, but also to communicate
essential points.
Let's take the image of a dog groomer as an example. You may use a caption like this:
“Dog
groomers have 36 percent higher job satisfaction than the average profession
and earn 28% more than those in related fields.”
(Note:
I made those numbers up.)
As you can see, it includes information that a reader of the post could find useful, and it starts with the phrase "dog groomers."
Title Text
& Alternate Text
If an image
cannot be loaded, alt text is a piece of code that instructs the browser what
text to display instead. This can happen if the picture URL is incorrect or if
the device doesn't support images. People who are blind or visually impaired
utilize it so that their screen reader can tell them what the image is.
When adding
alt text, keep in mind that it serves two purposes: SEO and display for people
who can't view the image? Don't just cram a bunch of keywords in there. This
will not benefit users, and it may result in a Google penalty. Instead,
When you hover
over an image in Chrome, the title text appears, but it isn't taken into
account for SEO purposes, thus it's not required to include the title attribute
in your photos. Instead, simply include your keywords in the alt text in a way
that makes sense to those who can't view the image. Make sure your most
significant term appears first in your alt text because it will be given the
greatest weight.
For instance,
consider the following term in bold:
“A dog groomer trims the fur of a dog.”
Image File Dimensions
While picture file size has no direct influence on SEO in the same way that adding a keyword to the filename or alt text does, it does have the indirect effect of slowing down the load speed of a web page. If a page takes too long to load, it may suffer a Google penalty and may not rank as well as it could.
As a result,
it's critical to ensure that all of your photographs are resized to a suitable
dimension and file size. Some people simply download the full-size image from
the stock photo source and resize it on the screen with HTML, but the file size
would be enormous. Instead, resize the image to the exact dimensions that you
require.
Also, if at
all feasible, attempt to lower the file size without sacrificing image quality.
If you're using WordPress, you can lower the file size with a plugin. There are
a number of free plugins that can help you reduce the size of your photographs
without sacrificing image quality.
Videos
Although many
individuals still prefer reading, video is increasingly becoming the preferred
format for online content. (For individuals who prefer their content in written
format, having both text and video on your site is a good idea.)
Many websites
clung to text for a long time since performing SEO on videos was tricky, but
it's getting a lot easier these days. Google's algorithms have changed, making
it easier to use videos on your site while still attracting search engine
traffic.
Search Engine Optimization for Videos
If you use
WordPress, the Yoast Video SEO plugin can help you easily optimize your videos,
even if you're embedding YouTube films on your own site. Embedded videos
usually don't have the same SEO value as other types of videos.
The plugin is available at https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/video-seo/.
There's also a free plugin here that does the same thing, although some people believe it's buggy and may be vulnerable to security risks:
https://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/wp-video-seo
Use this plugin at your own risk due to potential security issues, however, it could be a viable alternative if you don't want to pay the Yoast plugin's costly fee.
If you're
uploading your own videos to YouTube or other video sites, make sure to use relevant
keywords in the tags, video title, and description, with the most important
keyword appearing first.
Embedding vs. Producing
One of the main reasons video content is so beneficial to SEO is that it has the potential
to become viral and garner a lot of links. Backlinks, particularly organic
links from authoritative sites, can significantly improve your search engine
exposure. Of course, getting them without paying for them can be difficult
(which Google can actually ban your site if they catch you doing it.)
This is a
fantastic story on the subject:
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/guide-to-video-seo/
The article discusses how Dollar Shave Club was able to significantly enhance their backlinks by developing a viral video that went popular on the internet.
This is what
video can do for you, but only if you create it yourself. Otherwise, the links
will mainly lead to the video's original producer.
That isn't to imply that sharing other people's videos won't help you get a lot of backlinks. Some websites specialize in accumulating intriguing films and putting them on their own sites in order to generate viral traffic via Facebook and other social media platforms. However, if you have your own content, it will be lot easier.
Downloads
Downloads are
another type of media that can help you increase your search engine traffic,
especially if you have relevant information to provide.
For instance,
you might provide free downloadable PDF guidelines (which should not be sent
via autoresponder if you want to reap SEO benefits) or downloadable software
that you develop.
For example,
if you're in the dog grooming business, you could include a few PDFs that
explain various parts of the industry, as well as simply scheduling an application that you had a developer construct just for dog groomers.
One thing to
keep in mind is that you cannot simply copy goods from other websites and use
them as free downloads on your own website, even if they are free elsewhere.
The majority of people who make free things only want them to be offered on
their own website.
Search Engine
Optimization for Downloads
If you're
giving PDFs for download, they're intrinsically indexable as long as they're
created with plain text rather than graphics. The text within them may be
crawled, and each PDF can be found in search engines.
As a result,
you'll almost certainly want to include some keywords in your PDF, as well as
in the file name and title.
If you're
selling software or other downloadable goods, such as zip files containing
multiple files, you'll need to develop a separate download page for each item,
which you may optimize like any other page on your site.
Make sure to
include keywords related to the download, as well as generic download text like
"download" and "free."
Text
Even while the goal of this book is to teach you how to create content that isn't just text,
it's vital to remember that text will always be a large part of the internet
content. Written material will continue to rank higher than other types of
content (usually speaking), and many people still choose to read rather than
watch videos or download files.
Even if you
utilize images, videos, and downloads, you should use text to make up a large
amount of your content, and you should use text even on sites that employ other
forms of media to boost your SEO.
Text Search Engine Optimization
The way Google indexes and presents its results has undergone some significant adjustments. You may already be aware that, in general, lengthier material ranks higher than shorter stuff. But did you know that if you want to enhance your rankings, you need also to update your previous content?
It's critical to keep these developments in mind while you create content so that you can give Google exactly what it wants. Let's take a look at a few of the most significant new features.
Length
As you may already be aware, Google now favors longer content. It used to be able to rank well with 300-word articles, but now it's much easier to rank with material that's at least 1,000 words long. In fact, it appears that the more substance there is, the better.
Although you should never add extra words solely to increase your word count, you should make your material as long as possible without jeopardizing readability.
Updates
If you had
something new to say on a topic in the past, you would write a brand new post
for your blog or website. You could link to it from the original article, but
in most cases, you'd use it to produce new material that could rank in the
search engines.
This is no longer a good strategy, as Google now appears to prefer updated content over fresh content, especially when upgrading existing content lengthens it even more.
In fact, it's a good idea to revisit some of your most popular articles to see if anything has changed recently that you might incorporate into the original to bring it up to date. This can significantly improve the rankings of your original material.
Conclusion
It's possible that your content strategy is out of date if you're having trouble getting traffic to your website. It's understandable that you're having trouble getting traffic if you're focusing primarily on content and employing outdated SEO techniques.
Things in SEO
are a lot different now than they were a year or two ago? It's no longer about
stuffing your keywords into as many pages as possible and collecting as many
backlinks as possible. Other factors, such as different forms of media and how
often older information is updated, are now taken into account by Google.
You will not
only attract more search engine traffic, but you will also attract more people
from other sources, if you incorporate different sorts of media on your site.
Because photos and videos are significantly more shareable than text, you'll
get more viral traffic from sites like Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook if you
incorporate media in addition to text.
While you
should never include other forms of media just to include them, judicious usage
of photographs, videos, and downloads can assist raise your website's traffic
and user happiness and engagement.
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