Best Universal SEO Guide for Beginners

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Universal Search Engine Optimization Techniques

What is Universal Search?

In search engine optimization, “Universal SEO” (also called “Blended SEO” or “Enhanced SEO”) refers to the integration of additional content such as likes of videos, images or maps – displayed above or amongst the organic search results of search engines like Google or Bing.

In 2007, search engine results on Google is more than just the 10 blue links. Google since then has introduced more detailed inbox formats and additional media which we see appearing amongst, above or even alongside the organic search results on SERP. This helps in deciding and understanding better for the searcher and also helps in higher traffic. This Universal representation is also known as blended or enhanced searches.

How to Optimize Content?

We have already learnt how to optimize the text (in our previous blogs). Now let us look at other content which we can optimize.

How to Optimize Video

8 Video Optimization Tips for Faster Loading Times

Why is video optimization important?

Video content is a great way to keep users engaged, educated and informed, which is why more developers are adding videos to their websites.

The size of the average web video also grew from 200 KB to 800 KB in just the past two years or so. If you have a lot of video content on your website, then you can achieve massive performance improvements by following some video optimization best practices.

Which video formats are best for the web?

Thanks to their ability to pack high-quality videos into small file sizes, MP4 and WebM have become the standard formats for platforms like YouTube and Vimeo. MP4 videos are supported by all browsers while WebM is currently only fully supported by Chrome and Firefox.

Introduction to video optimization for websites

Delivering high-quality video content to users is a two-step process. You must:

1. Optimize the video file so that it has a minimal effect on page speed.
2. Optimize the web page to properly embed and display video content.

Video file optimization for web pages

For best results, follow these tips before adding videos to your website:

• 1. Use data compression tools
• 2. Convert to HTML5 supported formats
• 3. Remove audio from muted videos
• 4. Stream directly from your server
• 5. Use a content delivery network

Web page optimization for video content

Selecting the right video format and optimizing how data gets delivered is a good start; however, to ensure a smooth user experience, your website must also be optimized to support high-quality videos. Here are some tips:

• 6. Specify the video size
• 7. Defer loading videos until page load is complete
• 8. Prioritize mobile users

Video optimization for SEO

Platforms like YouTube are great tools for gaining exposure, but if you want to boost your website’s ranking on Google, then you should host your video content on your domain. When you upload videos to YouTube with a link to your website in the description, search engines give preference to YouTube. Therefore, someone could search for your company name on Google and end up on YouTube rather than your website, which is a scenario you want to avoid.

• Create metadata to make your videos easier to index.
• Video titles should be descriptive instead of generic. Keep titles short, but pack your description details with keywords.
• Picking the best keywords may require some research, but any information you provide will improve your chances of appearing in search results.
• Don’t forget to choose an appropriate thumbnail.
• Complete these steps after data compression so that your beautiful metadata doesn’t get wiped out during the process.

Does your website need videos?

The benefits of having video content on your website usually outweigh the cost added to your page load. That said, if your video content isn’t adding value to the user experience, then it’s just wasting a lot of resources.

In such instances, the performance boost you’d get from omitting videos altogether might be more beneficial to your bottom line. Use multimedia content strategically so that you don’t overwhelm new visitors. Regularly reevaluate all of your multimedia content to make sure each element of your website serves a purpose.

How to Optimize Audio or Podcast

The Basics of Audio SEO

In the early days of web SEO, the variables and ranking factors didn’t necessarily change as frequently as they do today. As Google and other search engines became smarter, it became harder to rank for specific and competitive keywords. Today, Audio Search Engine Optimization is like web SEO in 2000. If you focus your efforts on it now, it will pay dividends in the future.

The Principles of Audio SEO

Most traditional SEO techniques become obsolete since the way audio is created, consumed, recommended, and found, differs significantly compared to the web. The foundation of good SEO for audio starts with ensuring your podcast is available for search engines and podcast platforms to crawl and index your audio content. From there, additional SEO techniques help move your content up the ladder.

When spoken-word audio is transcribed from voice to text and applied to new audio SEO strategies, there is an endless amount of growth potential for podcast creators to get discovered.

Audio SEO is a major factor for podcasters looking to grow their listener base and cut through the noise of the ever-growing audio content. Soon, search engines and podcast apps will be leveraging data, text, quality of audio, location, social signals, drop-off, and other indicators to make the discovery of audio content much more relevant and better than it is today.‍

Podcast Directories

 There are a few directories out there where you can list your podcast. Here are the big ones:

1. Overcast
2. Stitcher
3. Podcast Addict
4. Podcast subreddit
5. TuneIn

How to Optimize Images

1. Choose the Right Format

Before you can start adding images to your site, you want to make sure you’ve chosen the best file type.

While there are many image formats to choose from, PNG and JPEG are the most common for the web.

• PNG: Produces better quality images, but comes with a larger file size.
• JPEG: You may lose image quality, but you can adjust the quality level to find a good balance.
• WebP: Choose lossless or lossy compression using this, the only image format supported by both Chrome and Firefox.

2. Compress Your Images

According to HTTP Archive, images make up on average 21% of a total webpage’s weight.

I prefer WP Smush as my WordPress plugin. It reduces the image file size without removing the quality. Whatever plugin you use, make sure to find one that compresses the images externally on their servers. It reduces the load on your site.

Or, take it a step further and use an image CDN that detects the device and optimizes the image before delivery. Cloudinary and Imgix are two options to try out.

If you’re unsure how your images are affecting your page speed, I recommend using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.

3. Create Unique Images

You want your photos to pop on your site. If you fill your website with stock imagery, you’ll look unoriginal – like thousands of other sites that don’t stand out.

Too many websites are cluttered with the same generic stock photos.

While you may have your stock images perfectly optimized, they won’t have the same impact or potential SEO benefits as an original, high-quality image.

The more original pictures you have, the better experience for the user and the better your odds are of ranking on relevant searches.

Keep in mind that large images are more likely to be featured in Google Discover. As Google recommends in its Advanced SEO resource, “Large images need to be at least 1200 px wide and enabled by the max-image-preview: large setting, or by using AMP.” Do not use your logo as the image.

4. Beware of Copyright

Regardless of the image files, you choose to use, make sure there’s no copyright conflict.

If Getty, Shutterstock, DepositFiles, or some other stock photo provider owns an image you use, and you don’t have a license to use it, then you’re risking an expensive lawsuit.

Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), you could be issued a notice if you have violated any copyright issues. If the owner of a piece of content sees their content on your website, they can issue a DMCA Takedown which you must comply with.

Google Images allows you to filter results based on those available for reuse.

5. Customize Image File Names

When it comes to SEO, creating descriptive, keyword-rich file names is crucial.

Image file names alert Google and other search engine crawlers as to the subject matter of the image.

Typically, file names will look like “IMG_1612020” or something similar. It doesn’t help Google.

Change the file name from the default to help the search engines understand your image and improve your SEO value.

This involves a bit of work, depending on how extensive your media library is, but changing the default image name is always a good idea. Let’s take this image of chocolate for example:

6. Write SEO-Friendly Alt Text

Alt tags are a text alternative to images when a browser can’t properly render them. Similar to the title, the alt attribute is used to describe the contents of an image file.

When the image won’t load, you’ll get an image box with the alt tag present in the top left corner. Make sure they fit with the image and make the picture relevant.

Paying attention to alt tags is also beneficial to the overall on-page SEO strategy. You want to make sure that all other optimization areas are in place, but if the image fails to load for any reason, users will see what the image is supposed to be.

Plus, adding appropriate alt tags to the images on your website can help your website achieve better rankings in the search engines by associating keywords with images. Even Google has remarked on the value of alt text in images.

It provides Google with useful information about the subject matter of the image.

Alt text is viewable in the cached text version of the page, aiding in its benefit to both users and the search engines. For further SEO value, the alt text can act as the anchor text of an internal link when the image links to a different page on the site.

7. Think About the Image File Structure

In 2018, Google updated its Image Guidelines. One of the major updates they revealed was that they use the file path and file name to rank images.

Repeat: The file path and file name are an actual ranking factors.

For example, if you’re an e-commerce brand with multiple products, instead of placing all your product images into a generic /media/ folder, I would recommend structuring your subfolders to more category related topics like /shorts/ or /denim/.

 8. Make Your Page Title & Description

Google also revealed that it uses your page title and description as part of its image search algorithm.

The Google support page states:

“Google Images automatically generates a title and snippet to best explain each result and how it relates to the user query… We use a number of different sources for this information, including descriptive information in the title, and meta tags.”

All of your basic on-page SEO factors like metadata, header tags, copy on the page, structured data, etc. affects the way Google ranks your images.

9. Define Your Dimensions

If you’re using AMP or PWAs, you are required to define your image dimensions in the source code.

However, if you’re not using either, it’s still a best practice to define the width and height. It provides a better user experience.

Plus, it allows the browsers to size the image before the CSS is loaded. This stops the page from jumping when it loads.

Image dimension attributes are also important for preventing Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) issues that can interfere with your Core Web Vitals optimization.

Making sure that you include width and height attributes for every image and video element is key.

This tells the browser how much space to allocate for the resource and prevents that annoying content-shifting that lowers your CLS score.

10. Make Your Images Mobile-Friendly

Oh, mobile SEO. At its worst, it can give you a high bounce rate and low conversions. But, at its best, it can give you more ranking power and better user engagement.

Problem is, how do you optimize your images for the mobile-first index?

You create responsive images. This means the image will scale with the size of the site whether the user is using a desktop or mobile. It adjusts to the size of the device.

11. Add Images to Your Sitemap

Whether you’re adding your images to your sitemap or creating a new sitemap for images, you want images somewhere in your sitemaps.

Having your images in a sitemap greatly increases the chances of search engines crawling and indexing your images. This results in more site traffic.

If you’re using WordPress, Yoast offers a sitemap solution in their plugin.

How to Optimize PPT and Slideshare

Title And Final Slides To Optimize Online Business Presentations with SEO

For effective SEO, it is vital to form your title slide with an eye-catching heading. When clients are browsing online, the title slide is the first thing that piques their attention to check out your presentation. Infuse your title with appropriate keywords seamlessly. Irrelevant and passive words should be avoided in the presentation titles.

Harness beautiful graphics that complement the content of your titles to make them more visually appealing. Integrating the right visuals with apt keywords will help the search engines match the users’ particular search queries. Your final slide(s) should incorporate information about your business, website URLs, contact information, and links to your social media accounts.

Utilize Long-Tail And Multiple Keywords

Suitable keywords in the presentation content hold a prominent place in SEO. Merging long-tail keywords and search phrases in the slide deck can boost organic traffic by up to 80%. When forging the content, employ specific words and sentences rather than writing long and complicated phrases. This will assist you in keeping your content above your competitors in the general search.

Sidestep from cluttering the slides with unrelated keywords rather than keep them natural and organic, just like the title and content of your slides. Regularly expand and update your SEO keyword list, which can be done using various tools available online. Keyword grouping and organization must be done diligently.

Usage Of Actual Text

When creating an attractive presentation in PowerPoint, the actual text should be for optimum benefits. The mistake of text in the graphics images in JPG, PNG, or GIF format should be avoided at all costs. Typing the actual text with appropriate typography is always for SEO. So, good ideas for optimizing business presentations.

When the slide is with words in graphics, it may reduce or negate the search engines’ keyword ranking ability. Stellar images can be in the drops to supplement the text and attract the audience’s attention, but writing on images should be snipped off.

Sharing Presentation On Social Media

With the advent of digitization and internet culture, the power of social media has become enormous. SEO will work wonders if your business presentation is on all your social media handles. So, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and other media platforms give a push to your presentation among the viewers, enough to generate a “buzz.”

A presentation admired by the audience will earn praise, like, and shared multiple times on their profiles, making it popular. The search engines prioritize content with backlinks. Embed your presentation on every available platform to appear on search engine result pages (SERPs).

Use Internal Tags To Optimize Online Business Presentations with SEO

Along with a striking presentation, Tags hold a paramount role in an SEO-friendly slide deck. Just like the keywords, tags also categorize your content in a definite way. Using appropriate tags will make it easier for your users to search for your presentation. The primary designation of your presentation can be the keyword like Marketing Plan, followed by additional titles like Digital Marketing, SWOT, Marketing Strategies. So, good ideas for optimizing business presentations.

Utilize tags that correlate with your presentation and its content. Filling the tagging space with irrelevant tags may emanate a spam quality to your presentation. According to SlideShare, tags can surge searchability by 30%. So, using befitting tags can optimize SEO and render fortune for you.

Visually Appealing Presentations

Your presentation should have valuable content with poignant and powerful images to allure the audience’s attention. Moreover, PowerPoint presentations speak to the stakeholders through their visual charm. In conclusion, your presentation’s landing page should be dynamic, as it will appear in the thumbnail on every platform.

Incorporate your slides with a bold colour scheme, and precise typography, which makes the audience interested in your presentation. So, leverage charts, diagrams, timelines, shapes, and other graphics to make your presentation lively. Follow the 10–20–30 rule, which demands ten slides, 20 minutes, and 30 font sizes. So, good ideas for optimizing business presentations.

Upload To SlideShare

SlideShare is one of the most popular platforms to upload your presentations. The site LinkedIn, also provides substantial connectivity advantages for businesspersons. Uploading your presentation on SlideShare will boost SEO and also make your presentation reachable.

SlideShare provides easy embedding of presentations on websites and blogs. So, suffusing your production on your website can increase your site traffic and provide SEO benefits to you. SlideShare is a global platform that can help you garner a fair share of the organic audience if used well.

Provide Links To Optimize Online Business Presentations with SEO

Your presentation should be with links to your website and other social media pages for your audience to reach them easily. Further, you can also provide a link to your presentation on your website as search engines will index and detail the list links to PowerPoint files.

Ensure that the links in the presentation are clickable by the users, which you can achieve by using the embed feature. You can conveniently include a “Call-To-Action” in the final slide. Finally, your audience to get a free trial or fill out a form.

A compelling PowerPoint presentation with enthralling visuals and relatable content goes a long way in multiplying your business prospects. Using the right SEO techniques can help you design an expression. So, has an extensive reach to the audience and ranks you in the first five pages of the search engines. Augment your presentation with these SEO tricks to reinforce your branding image.

Tip: Keep Slides the Optimal Length

You could follow Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. This would equal:

• 10 slides
• 20 minutes
• 30 point font

Include Links

If you want people to share the content that you’ve created for SlideShare, then make sure that you make it easy for them to share by including clickable links throughout the presentation, such as by using the handy ‘embed’ feature. You should also contain a link to your company’s website so that anyone viewing the deck from outside of SlideShare know who you are.

Embed on Your Blog

As previously mentioned, SlideShare presentations are easy to embed. This means you should also be embedding the presentations onto your blog or website – which will drive traffic to your site instead of SlideShare. By posting your presentation onto your blog you’re achieving the following

• Additional, Quality Content: Your presentation will show “search engines that you have something of value to say about hot topics in your industry.”
• Market Your Business: It gives you the chance to prove “your prominence in the industry.”
• Authority: You’ll also prove to search engines and visitors that you’re an authority figure within your industry.

You should also embed your presentations into any sites that you contribute to if possible.

Share It Everywhere

Another proven SEO tactic is to share your presentation across multiple social media channels. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Pinterest, you can help increase the views of your presentation by giving it a little push on your social channels. More importantly, is that in the more “places you can embed your presentations, the more authority they’ll receive on search engine results pages (SERPs).”

As a whole, SlideShare is easy to integrate with most social networks, so sharing it in as many places as possible isn’t all that challenging.

Include a Call to Action

Since SlideShare makes it easy to embed links, it’s also easy to include a call-to-action (CTA) at the end of your presentation – such as that link to your website. The idea is to get visitors to visit a landing page for something additional, like a free trial or free download if they fill out a form.

Just remember that when creating a CTA, you want to use actionable phrases like “Download Now,” “Get Your Free Trial,” or “Speak to an Expert.” 

How to Optimize PDF

Most on-page SEO elements that you’re used to seeing in HTML have an equivalent version in PDFs and are used in the same way you’re used to. Many are also there for accessibility reasons. So let’s discuss a few ways to optimize PDFs for SEO:

1. Write good content
2. Add an optimized title
3. Add an optimized description
4. Use a relevant filename
5. Include image alt attributes
6. Use headings
7. Include links

To add links in a PDF

1. Click the Edit PDF button on the right sidebar
2. Next Click the Link dropdown on the Edit menu
3. Click Add/Edit Web or Document Link
4. Draw a rectangle around the text you want to link
5. Set the Link type to Invisible Rectangle
6. Set the Link Action to Open a web page
7. Add your URL