Did you know that the presence of multimedia on a website can enhance its standing with search engines? If a search engine sees that your website includes a mix of images, videos, slideshows, and/or audio, it will consider these elements a sign of quality, effort, and professionalism. If your site includes these elements, visitors are likely to linger and look at them, increasing your website's dwell time.
| Elements | Description |
|---|---|
| Images | Provide text in the HTML source code by assigning any image "alt attributes." The alt tag should describe what objects or actions appear in the image. |
| Plug-ins | Elements that use plug-ins should include text that is visible on the web page (to visitors as well as search engines), describing the content of the movie or interactive object. |
| Video & Audio | Provide a transcript of the content, especially if the words and phrases in the script would be helpful for a search engine. |
Too much multimedia on a page is just as bad as too little, however. An overabundance of audio or video content is not only distracting, but it can also drastically increase the page's load time and lead to higher bounce rates for your site.
While search engines can recognize and even interpret text, they cannot watch a video, view images, or listen to an audio track. For this reason, you need to make sure that you describe the multimedia elements on your website using language that search engines understand—text. You can provide text descriptions or explanations of multimedia elements in several different ways. These are the ones most typically used.
Click through the tabs below to explore some of the SEO advantages and disadvantages of using different types and amounts of multimedia in your site.
Pro:
- Faster load times
Cons:
- Lower user interest
- Less-professional appearance
- Low "dwell time"
Including beneficial multimedia but setting reasonable limits will strike a balance with decent loading times, increased interest (and therefore "dwell time"), a higher likelihood of people bookmarking your site, and a better chance of search engines rating your site well.
Pros:
- More user interest
- Increased "dwell time"
Cons:
- Long loading times
- High "bounce rate"
- May be too distracting
