Name of Farm, State
After copying and pasting the embed code for the video, you’ll need to write a unique intro paragraph for the farm and farmer. Be sure to link out to their website or facebook page, and if you can’t find a url managed by them, link to any decent site that mentions their farm. (Unless the site is a total mess we do not open in a “blank” page; we share the love.) It’s important that the paragraph you write has not been copied or pasted from another site, as google penalizes ‘duplicate content’ making it best to use original copy.
On occasion, you may have a second paragraph. Either way, copy and paste the MailChimp code below. (So ugly…hoping to fix soon.)
Know Your Farmer | Name of Farm, State
Name of Speaker, bold: To populate the page, you’ll use the edited .srt file that was generated for the video.
You’ll need to remove all of the time codes and re-arrange the words so that they flow together, visually.
Unlike the video transcript itself which should match the speaker as they talk, this version should share the speaker’s thoughts clearly with a reader. Sometimes you’ll need to clean things up so that words read more easily and sentiments remain easy to grasp, even without the help of facial expressions and body language.
Your goal is to keep readers on the page. You should be under the assumption that if they’re reading the transcript, it’s unlikely that they’re also watching the video.
Remember to Introduce New Speakers in bold: Scatter photos throughout! We keep them centered.
And make sure to always, always fill in the alt tags. This allows people who can’t load the images to understand what they are, and allows Google to understand more clearly what our page is about.
Captions are okay to use, as well. Ours should be restyled.
Second Headline Also Has Farm Name
It’s important to break the page up with headlines, which Google gives a lot of weight to. The further down the page the headlines are, the less weight they have.
Most sites today, including ours, are designed to be mobile-first.
This means that paragraphs are much shorter, sometimes just 1 or 2 sentences. Short paragraphs are easier to read on a phone while regular paragraphs can appear biblical.
- Bulleted lists are also great for mobile readers, but are harder to implement within quoted transcripts.
The reason that readability matters so much is that Google measures the length of time users stay on our pages. If our site is hard to read, they may leave quickly, and Google will refrain from sending people our way.
Because many people are actually ‘scanning’ content instead of reading it, I like to occasionally pull out and bold some really great thoughts.
You should do the same when possible. The reason that scanning is okay even though it takes less time, is that Google also gives weight to how far down the page users scroll.
Keep the Headlines Coming
Please turn your attention to the righthand sidebar (you have to be logged in) where it says “Layout settings for this post.”
There are a few things for you to do here.
Under Categories, choose Know Your Farmer Videos.
Under Sidebars, click and ‘break’ the link next to Show right sidebar. And under Post Author, click and break the link to access the dropdown. Choose ‘None’.
Lastly, you’ll need to enter Farm Name State (as in: Flynn Farms Washington) as the focus keyphrase in Yoast, which begins below the WordPress editor box. This is our default keyphrase strategy for Know Your Farmer videos.
The only reason that I would choose something else, is if Yoast tells me that the site I’m linking out to is also going for that keyphrase. We don’t want to outrank any farm that’s trying. In this instance, I would look for other places on our site to also link out to that farm, as that is good SEO manners.
You’ll also need to rewrite the snippet, using whatever Focus Keyphrase you land on.
From here, you can do whatever Yoast instructs you to do (and that you still feel good about) to get both the SEO Analysis and Readability lights to turn green.
Remember to leave the “Find a Real Organic Farm Near You” (halfway down the page) and Watch more Know You Farmer Videos” (below) links in place.