Lesson 10: In-Depth Optimizations

As more and more businesses and SEO professionals realize the value of content marketing as an integral part of their online advertising strategy, they are rapidly increasing the volume and variety of the content they produce.

To be sure, compelling content is useless if no one can find it. Therefore, content optimization is vital in content marketing because your content won't be effective if people can't find it.

By optimizing your content, you're giving search engines the information they need to understand the purpose of your site. The data is then incorporated into the search engine's presentation of results for a given set of query terms. Since these search results now include text, images, videos, and news content, your content optimization processes should be adapted accordingly.

In-Depth Optimizations

Optimizing text on websites is essential for all written content, but it is essential for landing pages that link to other pieces of content.

The title tag is a critical part of search engine optimization. The title tag, which briefly overviews the page's content, is introduced in HTML with the tag "(title)."

Multiple instances of title tags are used to provide context for the material presented. For example, search engines will often use them as the anchor text for each search results in their return. In addition, they are frequently used as page descriptions when sharing content on social media. Finally, if you're using tabs in your browser, the title tag will also serve as the tab name for the currently displayed page. In this way, title tags are helpful for search engines and humans who will be reading the page.

SERPs often use meta descriptions as the descriptor text for each result, making them crucial information for your audience.

If you want people to click on your pages, the meta-description must accurately describe what they will see after the jump.

Meta descriptions that work effectively state the page's purpose in a few words and incorporate relevant keywords. Avoid using generic descriptions like "Welcome to our home page" that doesn't tell searchers anything about the content or give them a reason to click through, as this is your chance to convince them to visit your page. Furthermore, search engines have a character limit of around 150-160 characters for descriptions. Any text past that point is likely to be truncated.

In some ways, meta keywords can be considered an extension of meta descriptions. However, meta keywords don't seem to help with page rankings, and they can even hurt them if the tag is "overstuffed," which is a common mistake.

To increase their chances of being included in more search results, some web admins stuff as many keywords as possible into the meta keyword tag. However, this is not the case, so it is prudent to err on the side of caution and include only a small number of highly relevant keywords in this tag.

Including relevant keywords in your URL helps search engines better understand the context of your content. Therefore, besides fixing tags, you should improve your URL structure to be clear and meaningful and include the right search terms relevant to your more extensive content on the page. In addition, you should use long-tail keywords in your URLs when possible so that people looking for specific information can find your site.

Optimizing Site Images and Other Media

Customers often use image search, so making your visual content easy to find is essential. If a search engine finds that your image is relevant to a particular search term or phrase, it will include it in the main "Web" search results and the specialized "Image" search results. Therefore, your images may show up on a search engine results page even if none of your textual content does.

In contrast to textual content, search engines cannot fully comprehend visual media's meaning. (Though this is an aspiration for all search engines). While search engines rely heavily on the surrounding content of a page (such as the text and text-related tags) to determine an image's relevance to searches, the meta tags used for each image are also crucial. Title tags, alt tags, and source specs are all examples of image metadata that can be improved. These image tags should be optimized for the best search engine results.

When an image can't be displayed, the alt tag's description is used instead. For a few crucial reasons, this is essential:

An image may not be displayed if a user has a slow internet connection or the page does not load correctly.

The alt tag is also read aloud by text-reading software to describe images

Keyword-rich lines are ideal for describing image assets on your site

As with alt tags, image tags specify which text should appear when a mouse has hovered over, or a user scrolls past an image. The tags you use should accurately describe the image and include relevant keywords so that your audience can understand the context of the image.

Good filenames go one step further by giving readers information about the image's relationship to the rest of the page's content.

Filenames should contain the keyword you're optimizing for. So, for example, instead of uploading pictures to your website with names like "PC000183.PNG," give them more meaningful titles like "icecreamcone.jpg."

If a page does not load properly, a user may see the text in the alt tag instead of the image. To reduce the likelihood of these page-load issues, you can optimize the file size of your images to ensure your website can handle them without crashing. Your website's search engine rankings may suffer if it takes a long time to load images or if individual pages are overloaded with images. For that reason, I think it's best to minimize your file sizes without significantly diminishing the quality of your images.

Video Content

Video content creation has become increasingly accessible, which is excellent news for marketers. Videos don't always have to be scripted or professionally shot to be successful. Instead, it would help if you were thinking about creating and publishing compelling, practical, enjoyable, and exciting videos, as evidenced by countless videos on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook that go viral daily.

Start by making an optimized, branded channel for your company on one of the many available video-sharing websites. A branded channel helps people remember your brand and gives your other content more exposure. In addition, the following steps can further enhance your video:

Including relevant keywords in your video's title is essential, as is writing a title that piques your audience's interest. Bland or overly keyword-focused titles will make viewers think your video is nothing more than marketing fluff. To succeed, your video's title must be interesting enough to entice viewers to see it through to the end.

A video's description aims to inform potential viewers of its content and their expectations for what they'll see. While it is essential to include keywords in your description, it is more important to write for human readers than for search engines. To help your viewers find the supplementary materials and information you provide, you should always start your video descriptions with a link to the most relevant page on your website.

The description and title tags, like image alt text, are read by search engines to determine what a video is about and where it fits in.

Upon completing your video's optimization process, most video hosting services, including YouTube and Vimeo, will supply you with embed codes to incorporate into your website's HTML. This will allow viewers to watch your videos without leaving your page and going to the video hosting service's own. Additionally, your video's filename can benefit from optimization like an image's can by including relevant keywords.