There was once a time when just text on a website was sufficient to reach the required target audience, but times have now changed. Multimedia content is now more important than ever before.
Now, to attract and keep people on your website, it is essential to include multimedia information which can be in the form of images, videos, podcasts, info-graphics and slideshows.
What you need to know:
- Search engines highly value multimedia content: video content is more likely to appear on the first page of search engine results than text-based content.
- A study of more than 72,000 Facebook pages found that videos generated most engagements.
- Blogs that include imagery receive 94% more views.
- We often judge a book by its cover: multimedia content grabs the reader’s attention.
Why should you be opting to use multimedia to increase your website reach and for better branding?
1) Multimedia content increases the time visitors spend on your site: The internet has completely changed the way we think and has drastically changed our attention spans. Even if you have an excellent piece of textual content; if it is too long the reader will lose interest and go elsewhere. Multimedia content gives readers a reason to stay for a bit longer on the site; and to look around at your products or your services.
2) Multimedia can be used to boost on page SEO: When search engine spider crawls your website, it stops at images and seeks keywords and key phrases that can potentially boost your ranking. Search engines notice multimedia content more than anything else since it has greater impact on overall content. This is why it is important to add alt text to all elements you upload. However, make sure you save all of your images for web, the reason for this is to reduce the size to make your website load as quickly as possible.
When naming the files, make sure they are relevant to the content of the page and include image descriptions as they will be found by Google. When uploading imagery do not just choose any old images and stretch them into place; imagery can be the death of a site, so make sure you have high quality photography and try and avoid stock imagery where possible.
3) Multimedia is better for branding: Adding multimedia to your website is like seasoning the food. You are adding elements to your website in order to enhance your website readability and certainly an effective way of drawing more viewers and building brands. Since people these days have become tremendously visual; video is one of the most popular multimedia types you can see everywhere. Honestly, without these channels like audio, video and supporting images it is almost difficult to build brand recognition. Make it simple: online brand building requires utilizing every multimedia asset available these days.
Conclusion
Not only does multimedia content visually draw immense traffic, it makes your website visually stunning. It encourages people to spend more time on your site and urges them to return. There are no specific rules about what multimedia content you should upload but the more you have; the more attractive your website will be. Try to be consistent with your branding as SEO optimization requires an effective marketing strategy and ongoing effort.
