Did you know that the longer visitors spend on different pages of your site can have a direct impact on how much Google loves you (and therefore improves your SEO ranking)?
When viewers linger on your website it tells the Google Monster that users are liking what they see and that they should keep sending users your way.
We talked about how important really great copy and awesome images impact your ranking last week.
Now we’re gonna get nerdy.
Because Google only loves you when everyone else loves you first.
Here’s the simple trick to improve your website’s SEO with images: Get found in Google Images (I didn’t say it was easy).
You do this with your image name and Alt text
Alt text, short for alternative text, is a small piece of text intended to describe an image, photograph, chart, or any other picture on a website.
The potential benefit is huge: your photos will stand a greater chance of appearing in image search results, which means more traffic to your site and a nice SEO boost.
- Add relevant keywords (phrases (or queries) that your potential clients would type into Google when looking for you
- Describe the image simply and accurately so search engines understand what’s going happening on the screen (Google hasn’t quite perfected the A.I. it takes to “read” images).
For example, here’s a headshot image WanderWeb’s sister company did for our friends over at ClearPoint Capital, a local finance firm:
Now if we were going to tag this image for Clearpoint Capital’s SEO purposes, we would use terms like:
Michael Tuell, Financial Advisor for Maine and New York, Clearpoint Capital, Retirement Advisor, Investment Advisor, and so on.
But imagine if Big Mike was modeling for a clothing company. We might use the following:
Blue Suit, glasses, Blue suit, power suit, professional attire, etc.
You can always game the system, but keep in mind your goal is to get the right people to your website, so start with the end in mind.
Now moving on to meta descriptions, which I see forgotten more often than not.
A meta description is a tag used to describe the content of a web page.
Since meta descriptions appear with your title and URL on the results pages, they have the power to help or hurt your results’ click-through rates.
Here’s how to encourage clicks and bring visitors to the yard (see an example below. Would you do anything differently?):
- Aim for about 1-2 sentences (140-160 characters) long
- Include your target keyword
- Target an emotion
- Add a call-to-action to entice opening the link
- Avoid duplicate meta descriptions
- Make it meaningful and descriptive, matching your content
? PIN IT
If you’re not sure how to add your meta descriptions, Google it. It’s not that hard.
Life gets busy though, so if you need some help, give us a ring.