WORDS THAT MATTER
ChaNae Bradley, MPA, Fort Valley State University and Victor Villegas, Oregon State University
Introduction
In today’s modern, technologically advanced world of algorithms, social media and smartphones, it should be easy to find specific information about everything. Right?
The answer is “yes” and “no.”
Yes, there’s a YouTube video about everything and bloggers who have written about highly specialized ideas, but are they easy to find?
Sometimes.
So, what should Cooperative Extension professionals, content creators, writers, web managers, and other marketing professionals do to attract an audience to their website? To help answer that question, Cooperative Extension communication and information technology professionals shared specific best practices that have helped to improve content marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Be certain to create descriptive links that include a call to action, not just “link here.” For example: Visit CDC.gov Titles should be short and to the point. Use tags properly. Use videos when possible, as they can help you generate quick SEO results. Search engines love videos. Learn how videos impact SEO rankings. Tag your YouTube videos with relevant keywords that you believe people would normally use to search for the type of content you are providing in your video. Add closed captioning to videos; this can be helpful for SEO and also help with accessibility. Use text that refers to keywords in titles. Make sure key terms or terms that appear consistently throughout are also included in headings and titles. Cross link pages with other authoritative sites. (Cooperative Extension sites pointing back to university websites, etc.) Cross link between pages on your website (in ways that make sense). Try to include photos with your text content as much as possible, and make sure they relate to your content. Visit Google for image best practices. Make sure all photographs have their alternative (alt) tag text filled out. Good accessibility practices are good for SEO.
What is “alt text”?
We found the best definition at Google.
“Alt text (text that describes an image) improves accessibility for people who can’t see images on web pages, including users who use screen readers or have low-bandwidth connections.
Google uses alt text along with computer vision algorithms and the contents of the page to understand the subject matter of the image. Also, alt text in images is useful as anchor text if you decide to use an image as a link. When choosing alt text, focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and is in context of the content of the page. Avoid filling alt attributes with keywords (keyword stuffing) as it results in a negative user experience and may cause your site to be seen as spam.”
If you’ve a v isual learner, check out this lightning talk by Google search advocate John Mueller, and this short video by Google’s Matt Cutts.
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