4. Include Images
Another great way to improve your content and search results is by using images. Pictures not only give visitors more engaging material, but also provide technical benefits for search engines:
• User engagement: Images keep visitors on the page longer and improve their overall experience. These are both ranking factors for search engines. Pictures also help break up the text, making your content more skimmable.
• Increased shareability: Original images, specifically things like infographics that make use of data, are a great resource for attracting writers and social media users. It makes the information you’re providing easy to share, allowing the writer or user to put your image in their content and credit you with a back link, which is great for raising your profile in search engines.
• Image search: If you put pictures in your content, they can rank in Google’s image search engine. That’s another way for viewers to engage with the material.
So, what are some best practices for adding images to your post? Luckily, the rules are fairly simple. No. 1 is to only include images that add value to your content—do not include a picture simply for the sake of breaking up text.
Also, only include images in intervals. Adding one after every 100 words is a good starting point (though you can be flexible). The key is to ensure the dispersal of imagery throughout your content.
Lastly, if you’re using a blog editing platform, you can add “alt-text” to your images. Alt-text is a text field search engines use to understand the context of your image. Most modern blog editors add alt-text to images. This text should be short and descriptive, providing a summary of the image's content for the sake of the search engines. This text won’t be visible to readers unless they know where to look.
5. Develop A Link-Building Strategy
Link-building is an integral part of search engine optimization. There are two types of links.
Internal links: These are the links you post routing readers to other content elsewhere on your website, allowing you to direct traffic to your own material. These links help search engines like Google’s by providing structure and context in your material.
External links: These are the links that bring visitors from other websites to your content. External links are valuable for search engine optimization because they signal to search engines that your content is high-quality.
External links to your website require a bit more work. So let’s look at some strategies for acquiring them. Here are some of my favorites:
• Offer to write an article for an industry publication. This article will often link back to your website, providing an external link from a reputable source.
• Conduct an interview or act as a guest speaker on a podcast.
• Set up and verify your business in directories like Google My Business. Reviews and links from these directories can influence search engine rankings.
• Write a blog roundup linking to other people’s content. By offering back links to other websites, you’ll improve the chances of receiving a link back from those websites in return.
• Establish yourself as a resource for a reporter or industry journalist.
Wrapping Things Up
Optimizing your content for searches is a complex process, but whether you’re just starting out and defining your keywords or optimizing your blogs by adding images and alt-text, I hope there’s a tip for everyone that will help improve your search results moving forward.
Susan Theder is the chief marketing and experience officer at FMG Suite.