In the interest of owning serious real estate in Google’s Universal Search, one must optimize all types of media. In this post we’ll outline best practices for optimizing such media files as images, video, podcasting, and PDF files.

Image optimization is done the second the picture is taken. Beyond considering rankings, you must consider the quality of the picture. If it’s good you’ll get links to help give it authority, but if it’s bad, it might not be worth taking the picture at all. After you’ve taken the shot of a lifetime, you need to name it properly and not rely on your camera to pick the perfect name of img_12896. Instead place keywords in the file name that represent the picture’s subject and that you’d like the picture to be found under. Lastly, as you insert it onto your page, remember to promote it within the site with relevant keyworded anchor text links and include keywords in the src and title attributes as:

<img src=”https://mysite.com/yellow_hot_air_balloon.jpg” width=”220″ height=”212″ alt=”Yellow hot air balloon” title=”Yellow hot air balloon”/>

Similar tactics are used when optimizing video and podcasting – name the files with keywords and give them attributes as such. However, since the engines can listen and view those files, you have to give them context and that is done on the host page itself. Yes, you’ll want to embed the files within HTML pages to help indexing. And finally, a transcript can also help.

Finally, there are a few tricks when optimizing PDF files. Don’t just skip over the document properties and call it good. You’ll need to actually give it a relevant, keyword loaded description, file name, title, subject, and keywords. This step is commonly forgotten but is very important.

Optimizing a few elements in your media files will get you on your way to owning the first page!