Jun
6
People love pictures and videos, but search engines ignore them when it comes to ranking your site. But there is a way to provide delightful photos and videos for your readers and please the search engines while you’re at it. And, it’s easy to do.
When you add photographs and other media to your website, give them titles. Viewers won’t see the titles–but search engines, which scan for words and phrases, will. That is how you get around the search engines’ blind spot for images.
While you’re at it, go to the trouble of crafting good titles. That is, think about your key word choices and how you can work them in. Include a description of the photo, a list of who’s in it and, if there’s room, where it was taken.
Another advantage of placing titles on all media: some programming allows for a little pop-up window showing the title of the photo when a reader moves the mouse over it. And people who load web pages without images will at least be able to read the informative title.
Depending on the software used to create your website, you may also be able to add descriptions and alternate text for your media. That’s another opportunity to include key words that move you up the search engine ranks.
Finally, be sure to include descriptive captions for all media on the page itself. People often read captions before they read anything else. And, of course, the search engines will read them, too.
As you would with key words and phrases in the rest of your content, make captions, titles and descriptions you read as naturally as possible. People–and search engines–like that, too.