Any sound SEO strategy, no matter the type of business, will have two similarities. The first, visual content. The second, video content. Everybody knows about social media and SEO but what most don’t realize is what’s actually needed in order to make your SEO strategy work. These two types of media are among those considered most vital and can be found in the elite SEO strategies today.
Simply put, you can have blog posts written by all-star writers who are regarded as the next great one in their respected industry, but people are more drawn to visuals than text. The average person just isn’t going to want to read a lengthy article. Often, marketers enhance their blog posts with a few images that were easily found, but that’s ultimately missing the point. To achieve the highest level of success, you have to think beyond a pretty image of a happy person or a quick video of a cute cat. You have to look at visual and video content through the scope of SEO.
Visual and Video Content
Including strong visual content has numerous benefits. To start, it’s both sharable and engaging. As the old saying goes, a picture is worth 1,000 words. As a digital marketer, you have to figure out how to make those 1,000 words say all that you want to convey. The right image or video can turn a decent blog post or article into one that goes viral. Needless to say, image and video optimization is integral to current SEO strategy.
How to Optimize Video and Images on Major Search Engines
While SEO has undergone some transformations in recent years, what has worked in the past still is effective today. There are a few fundamental tips for optimizing videos and images that have stood the test of time:
- Think About Strategy
This isn’t anything new or groundbreaking. Think about what you want your audience to see when determining the visual content. Name the image appropriately, and mix in a quality image with stock images. Images are not all that different from text. Think of images that add value, not images that were easy to acquire and look cheap.
It may be wise to design a long-term video content strategy. Determine when and where you want to post videos while taking into account the content. In many ways, video and image optimization follows the same basic principles as text optimization. The right titles and short descriptions should include keywords that guide your target audience to the right place at the right time.
- About Keywords…
Now getting into keywords. Adding short descriptions to the images and videos you select can help search engines better find them. It never hurts to go back to the basics of SEO. While it’s wise to include a keyword or two, don’t over stuff your descriptions and titles with keywords. Everything you write should be relevant to your audience. Rather than writing a lengthy story in the description, keep it short, sweet and to the point. Let the end user know what he or she is about to view and why it should matter to them. Writing click-bait titles are beginning to get phased out. Facebook recently launched an anti-spam (and anti-click-bait) campaign. When you boil it down, nobody likes spam. Meaningful titles and descriptions can make all the difference.
- Shake Things Up
To help keep your content fresh, decide which images and videos you want to post on your own site and which to share in posts elsewhere. Break up longer videos into short clips and share those. Similar to written content, the best success is found when your strategy remains fresh and engaging.
Achieve Image and Video Optimization
When in doubt, think back to basic SEO best practices and do some research. There are plenty of resources out there to help. The most important note to remember is to always provide value. That’s the way you attract people to your business, and as a general rule of thumb, reduce the urge to post spam. Take your online presence to the next tier with a solid image and video content strategy for major search engines.
