An excellent way to positively impact search engine optimization, website design, and users’ experience all in one is to add images and videos to a website. Not only is media more eye-catching and engaging for users but will also show search engines that a website is valuable. Here are some ways that the use of media can benefit your website!
Keeps Users on Your Website
Adding photos and videos to your website is a great way to increase user’s time on your site. Increasing user’s time on your site is a great signal to search engines such as Google. If users only stay on a site for a few seconds before leaving, that is an indication that the content on that website is bad or not relevant. However, short videos or images can increase users’ time spent on a page which can help your website’s ranking on a search engine results page.
Breaks Up Your Content
Much like subheadings, videos and photos are the perfect way to break up long paragraphs of content. Reading long paragraphs can be very dull and boring for users. Incorporating images related to the text, such as infographics, can help visualize the content for users. Using photos is also a great way to highlight the products or services that a website is offering to users. Not only is it more user-friendly to break up long text with media, but it also will make a website look better.
Add Alt-Text
What is alt-text? Alt-text is a very short description of what an image is showing. Alt-text is extremely important for search engine optimization because it allows search crawlers to understand what the image is displaying. It can also help users who have their image displays turned off or visually impaired users using a screen reader understand what the image is supposed to show. Best practices for writing alt-text are to incorporate a keyword and to keep the description short!
While adding images and videos to a website is very important, it is even more critical that the media used is relevant to the content on the website. Be sure to also use photos or videos that you have permission to use! With all this information taken into account, start adding media to your website today!