Imagine a hospital’s Website with no photos on their online nursery page, no map on the location/directions page or no audio on the patient testimonial’s page. You’d feel disconnected, lost and distracted when navigating to those pages.
Thankfully, many hospitals embrace the usage of multimedia elements such as photos, maps, video and audio on their Websites. These multimedia elements make up what industry professionals like to call “engagement objects.”
This engagement ring captures your eye - the same way engagement objects on a hospital's Website can.
The Role of Engagement Objects
Engagement objects do just what they say—engage. They include any kind of interactivity that enhances the user’s experience such as:
• Audio Files
• Charts
• Live Streaming
• Maps
• Photos
• Polls
• Video
Engagement objects play a contributing role in how search engines, like Google, determine a Website’s ranking through a blended search. A blended search, or universal search, is where search engines include these engagement objects as part of their search result.
Having an engagement object such as a physician video about what to expect with cardiac surgery in the area of mitral valve replacement—following best practices for video search engine optimization (VSEO)—can help achieve a higher page ranking for your hospital’s Website.
So, engagement objects score big for both hospital marketers looking to up their rankings and Website users looking to become involved.
Do you think hospitals will use more video and engagement objects on their Websites in order to gain a higher page ranking?
Our final VSEO blog series ends Thursday with a look at Creating a Video Sitemap on Google.
Lisa Federico | Content Specialist | AVID Design
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This entry was posted
on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 1:33 pm and is filed under Online Video / Rich Media, SEO, Web 2.0.
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