This is the 5th article in a series about Winning on the Web.  Don’t forget to check out the previous article on balancing professional copywriting for SEO with copywriting for conversion.

Take a look at our banner at the top of this page.  Cliff and I just love our tag line, “Discover the Art of Business Development.”  We think it will resonate with our visitors as well.  So we’ve featured it prominently in a creative font as part of our header.  But we have done so knowing that we are falling victim to an important truth: SEARCH ENGINES CAN’T READ IMAGES.  Therefore, at least as far as our banner is concerned, our pages get no points for the search term “discover the art of business development.”

As I’ve discussed before, we’re not trying to rank for that term, but the point I’m trying to make is that just because humans can see, read, and or listen to something on your website, does not mean that search engines can do the same.  I see a lot of sites where people put up images of their print collateral for their web pages.  Guess what?  Search engines don’t know what that page is about.  I see people who embed copies of radio interviews and other audio content with little more than the title of the program and when it aired.  Guess what? Search Engines don’t know what the program is about.

How can we help search engines figure out what our images, audio, and video are about?  First, when using an image don’t forget about the title and alt tags.  For example, take a look at the 3 buttons below our header.  Google has no clue what the conversation bubbles, bar chart, or globe mean in the context of our site.  But we’ve told Google what they mean with our alt and title tags.  You can mouse over those images to confirm what Google sees.  So while Google can’t see those pictures, much less guess their relationship to each other and to our content, it can read the extra text we’ve provided in the HTML to help it understand.  Additionally, including these attributes in your HTML will help visitors to your site who are using a mobile device instead of a desktop browser, or who have visual impairments.

When providing audio and video content, you should generally provide a transcript of what’s being said and done.  Obviously, search engines can read the transcript, and thus send you visitors who are interested in that topic.  But the transcript also has the advantage of allowing your visitors to consume your information in the format they choose.  Frequently, people can’t or don’t want to play content out loud because they are at work or in another public place.  Written content allows them to consume your information anyway.

If you have great print collateral that you are currently putting up as-is on the web, or if you don’t know how to make sure that your code gives your media maximum search points, consider using our website repair service to make sure that all of your content is contributing to getting top search engine placement.

Have you seen your search engine rankings go up as a result of fixing your tags or providing written transcriptions?  Do you have rich multimedia content your unsure how to leverage?  Chime in with a comment!

Previous articles in the Winning on the Web Series
Having the best site in your industry, website repairs for maximum search engine and browser compatibility, professional copywrting for SEO, and balancing SEO and conversion.  These are all important considerations for beginning and maintaining a serious on page SEO initiative.