Images and video are not cheap to buy or produce so once you have them, you really should be making the most of them.

So, what can you do to make the most of these assets and how hard will they work for you?

Images

Image searches take up roughly 10% of search queries, so they are pretty important. They also feature in search engine result pages (SERPs) so a well optimised, relevant image could get your site to feature on the first page of Google without a text based link at all….

To make your images accessible you should:

• Make sure you have submitted a site map so that search engines can index the pages where your images are stored easily
• Offer a plain image behind any that are displayed in classy Flash enhancers so they can be indexed
• Include unique alt tags for each image using keywords
• Give images file names that describe what they actually are, as opposed to a number
• If images link directly to another page, include a link title tag
• Display images surrounded by relevant text content

In addition to these techniques you should be looking into getting the most from your images externally as well. Use your social media profiles to increase exposure of images and consider setting up accounts on sites like Flickr or Photobucket. Any way in which you can increase the chances of your image being viewed will in crease the chances of it taking up a position in the SERP.

Video

There are lots of advantages to using video on your site. Videos hold the attention of visitors, persuading them to stay longer on your site. They also allow you to demonstrate a product or service in an entertaining and concise manner without the need for visitors to trawl through lots of text. Finally, videos also appear in SERPs, so again they represent another opportunity of taking up one of those coveted positions.

As with images there are loads of opportunities to utilise your video across the web. YouTube is now the second largest search engine in the world and there are lots of other video sharing sites as well. An account with TubeMogul will allow you to post video to lots of them in one go.

For optimising video make sure you tag them properly. They need:

• A coherent title of between 75-120 characters
• A description that starts with the landing page URL and is up to 200 characters
• Tags that include keywords, brand, city and topics

The digital assets you own are difficult and expensive to acquire – make sure they are working as hard as they can be!