For search engines, is text considered much more rich than video or audio? Rather than a picture telling a thousand words when search engines scan a site it's more like the other way around isn't it? The reason I ask is because I have some audio and video sections on my site and I'm realizing that I should spend more time on text based articles for SEO.
I would use all three, text is definitely best for the search engines, but video and audio is probably best for humans. If you are creating really great content in your audio - video then people will be more inclined to link to it naturally - which will in turn help your rankings Peter
Well considering SEs wont actually pick up your video or audio unless they are anchored with text... text is the most important. If you ever add audio or video be sure to put in the description text (or anchor link) some key words relating to your niche.
Adding a description below videos seems to be the best option - I suppose it doesn't have to be a very long one (or does it?). It would be interesting if they could use an audio-text software to 'read' keywords based on the sound used - but that is probably not likely to happen any time soon.
You are correct - search engines prefer text, but audio and video can convert very well. What I'd do is goi with a balanced approach - use your multimedia, but also offer text-based summaries and transcripts of them (such as lyrics for songs) so that the search engines (as well as people who can't access the media) can still understand what the page is about.
That would be quite a lot of work (making transcripts). Do you make one of the whole thing or just a summary of 100 words or so?
Depends on the media in question. I prefer summaries though, but if a transcript is warranted, I'll write it.
Nowadays Google considers the unique content to be more effective for google ranking other than the offpage promotions and onpage. hey don't mix up google rankings and page rank because for increasing pr it's more important to spend time on offpage promotion..
Well, then may we should say "indexable content" ...audio and video are not yet properly indexed by the search engines....
Actually they consider off-page factors (especially backlinks from quality relevant pages on other related sites) to be more effective, which is why they're crushing the competition in the search industry. However, with that said, good quality content that is written for people (that people also love) is still king because you need that to attract those links in the first place.