How to Optimize SlideShare Presentations for SEO

How to Optimize SlideShare Presentations for SEO

In Oct 2006, the world was introduced with SlideShare. Rashmi Sinha, the CEO and founder, never realized that a small web-based slide service would grow this big. She even noted that “we were completely unprepared for the volume of presentations that were immediately being uploaded from all over the world.”

In Q4 of 2013, SlideShare was averaging at 60 million unique visitors and 215 million page views which make it the top 100 most-visited websites in the world. Since its inception, SlideShare has received over 18 million uploads in over 40 categories. No doubt, it has grown into a top destination for professionals.

Well, presentations on SlideShare can be a great source to generate traffic to your site. However, you need to optimize the slides in many ways. Today, I’m going to share a few SlideShare SEO tips with you which will help you optimize your slides to get SEO juice.

Let’s first understand you one should use SlideShare.

Why Use SlideShare?

why use slideshare

The stats says it all: Mainly because of LinkedIn’s SlideShare, a slide hosting service with over 18 million uploads, gets 70 million unique visitors every month. Currently, SlideShare has 38 million registered users. This, in a nutshell, means a lot of curious eyes to get the attention of. The site’s Alexa ranking is 168 and Page Rank is 8, which is really very high. Today, SlideShare is no doubt one of the top 100 most-visited websites. 

slideshare statistics
Image Source: BufferApp

For growing your business: Growth of your business, through networking and opportunities, is guaranteed if you are on SlideShare and sharing your best. You can write or upload your content in specific categories, making it easier for your audience to find you on SlideShare, and what more you want when SlideShare content appears readily in Google Search.

A great learning platform: SlideShare is not only for business, it is also a great learning platform. You can get hang of any subject just by spending few minutes going through slides and documents shared on the portal.

If you are on SlideShare and want to get the attention of all those curious eyes looking for the right content of interest, just uploading a file on the portal is not enough.

You need to increase your discoverability on the portal, and that’s when SEO comes into the picture. You need to optimize SlideShare presentation for SEO for getting better results, and by better results I mean, increased discoverability leading to increased number of business opportunities and potential customers.

SlideShare SEO Tips

Optimizing your SlideShare presentation for SEO is actually acrobatic, but with these SlideShare SEO tips, you can easily make an optimized SlideShare presentation.

SlideShare SEO Tip #01 Optimize Document Title

optimize slideshare presentation title

The title says it all and hence it should be your primary focus when it comes to optimizing SlideShare presentation for SEO.
Your document gets uploaded on SlideShare with the title in its URL. Google and other search engines preferably look for URL, therefore a relevant title with the keyword is what you should opt for.

Must Read: The Ultimate Buyer Keywords Guide for More Sales

SlideShare SEO Tip #02 Optimize Document Content

The documents or presentations that you upload on SlideShare do not have an HTML tag structure since these are either ppt or pdf files. In such documents, all Google looks for, are Keywords.

Your presentation content should contain an adequate number of keywords and the document content should be written following standard SEO practices.

To further optimize, you could interlink the pages, avoid duplicating the content, and cut down the size of the file. You have to basically make your presentation SEO friendly.

SlideShare SEO Tip #03 Keywords Optimization

keyword-optimization

Keywords are what we generally base our search. Therefore, keyword optimization of your SlideShare presentation is very important.

There are numerous tools for Keyword planning such as Google Keyword Planner.

Long Tail Keywords are more specific and have a higher conversion rate. Use Long Tail Keywords but do not force-fit them in the text, because content aesthetics also matters.

For Lang Tail Keywords there are numerous online free tools available such as KeywordXP PRO, Longtail Pro, Market Samurai, Keyword Tool Pro, WordStream, and Google Autocomplete Keyword Tool.

SlideShare SEO Tip #04 Transcript Images, Graphs, and Other Content

Transcript is a textual representation of image, graph, or video which cannot be read by search engines.

If you appropriately transcript images, infographics, figures, videos, or any non-text material in your document there are higher chances that the document will appear in search.

Also read: Video marketing trends and their impact

A study by Liveclicker shows that WebPages with video transcripts earned 16% more revenue than the ones without transcripts.

SlideShare SEO Tip #05 Tag It

add-tags-to-slideshare-presentations

Tagging your document with keywords increases your SlideShare presentation’s discoverability.

There is a limit of 20 tags per SlideShare presentation, and if you use targeted keywords including Long Tail Keywords, you already optimize your SlideShare presentation for SEO.

SlideShare SEO Tip #06 Links and Call to Action

Interlinking your document pages, topics or slides is a good idea, because search engines readily pick up such links.
Apart from interlinking you can provide links to external content, if relevant.

Call to action feature makes the content interactive. Through a call to action, you may offer something, generate curiosity, or provide contact details. Call to action is the sure shot for increasing traffic to your SlideShare presentation, only if you place it properly.

SlideShare SEO Tip #07 Advertise, Go Social

advertise-on-social-media

A key component in optimizing SlideShare presentation for SEO is to reach as many users as you can. This means you need to advertise your presentation, and the easiest way to do this is by posting it on your social network.

While posting your SlideShare presentation, keep in mind your target audience. Posting it on the forum of your niche may help generate traffic.

If you are posting on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, remember to use your keywords in the form of hash tags, and tag users with a large number of followers.

SlideShare SEO Tip #08 Embed Document on Blog

SlideShare is unique, in that, it allows you to post your SlideShare presentation on you LinkedIn wall or any other website.
This basically means, there are numerous ways you can advertise your SlideShare presentation.

SlideShare SEO Tip #09 Optimize Meta Description

Every document has Meta description, which is nothing but a snippet that summarizes your document or page.
To optimize SlideShare presentation for SEO, you should use chosen Keywords in the Meta description.

The Meta description should be written in such a manner so that it gives a quick summary of what’s inside your presentation.

SlideShare SEO Tip #10 Presentation Aesthetics

Finally, your success of retaining audience solely depends on how your presentation looks, how complex or simple it is, does it addresses issues not addressed by others, and its overall aesthetics.

No-one would want to waste time reading some gibberish; therefore, maintaining the presentation aesthetic is a must.
You can create neat, clean, easy to understand presentations just by using a pleasant color scheme, bulleted topics, images, and graphs.

Also read: Understand the importance color in web design

Your SlideShare presentation should not become heavy in size, which will basically affect its loading speed.
While doing so, also keep an eye on number of slides in your presentation and their size. If you believe in 20 minutes rule for presentations, 10-20 slides are all your SlideShare presentation should be limited to.

Summary

SlideShare by LinkedIn is one excellent slide hosting service which you can use for growing your business as well as for learning new science and technology. SlideShare gives you an opportunity to advertise your expertise and thereby, generate new business leads and social connections.

Everyday SlideShare receives a huge amount of presentations and therefore, unless you optimize SlideShare presentation for SEO, your content gets lost in the crowd.

Optimizing SlideShare presentations for SEO is a cumbersome job, but with a set of steps mentioned in this article, it can be easily performed. By maintaining the presentation aesthetics, using appropriate Keywords, and advertising the presentation, SEO for your SlideShare presentation can be easily achieved.

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