Search Engine Optimization commonly referred to as “SEO,” is one of the most effective strategies to help your website climb in organic rankings. How to improve SEO rankings is a constant concern of most marketers and business owners and most often translates into requirements to consider, and often reconsider the content you currently have on your website.
While the copy on your website is the most crucial aspect of SEO, you also need to consider your visual content. Visual images also count towards the overall effectiveness of your SEO strategy to help drive more traffic to your website, positively contribute to your quality score as well as page ranking, and in turn, increase the profit revenue of your business.
Here are the top ten ways in which your content can help improve the SEO of your website:
1. Visual Content
Using graphics and visuals that tell a story about your business is still one of the most popular ways to attract ideal customers and clients to your online platforms and, ultimately, your website. This will continue throughout 2023 as more people than ever are much more likely to stop and consume visuals and graphics with text than ever before.
Visuals are the first vector of sales.
Use Professional Styled Stock Photography to Promote Your Business.
Social media has a role to play in this online behavior since providing an audience with snippets of information with striking and colorful backgrounds encourages people to stop and pay attention while scrolling through hundreds of pieces of content per day.
Using this to your advantage when creating visual content for your website and social media platforms is a great way to provide value to your ideal audience, and also create organic engagement with your brand or business.
Your website should be designed in a way where information about how your business works or what you do is easily consumable in short and easy-to-understand sentences.
2. Consider the Roots of Your Business
As a business owner, blogger, or brand, you will want to consider the roots of your website. Why did you decide to start a website, to begin with? Did this root from a specific passion that you have about something?
Whether your website is to sell your products or services online, or a blog to write about topics that you are passionate about, your written copy and your visual imagery should come from a place of authenticity.
The only way your content can improve SEO and enhance rankings is if your content is founded on honesty, transparency, and dedication. People are no longer searching for perfectly tailored messages that sell to them continually.
Quite the contrary, studies show that people or consumers are more likely to choose websites, businesses, or brands that give them high-quality, valuable information without nagging them to purchase something.
This is exactly where the imagery you use will help support the copy on your website even more. For example, if you are writing a blog about the eco-friendly Bluetooth light bulbs that your online store sells, explain with factual information why these light bulbs are better than traditional incandescent light bulbs.
But always take it a step further.
With your visual content, you can show your audience exactly how to install your eco-friendly Bluetooth light bulbs. Show them how easy they are to use. Give a short step-by-step tutorial using pictures or a video clip on how to use them throughout their home. Even provide proof in pictures of the savings you can expect when switching to your light bulbs over traditional brands.
Using a well-thought, yet simple well-optimized model like this can attract potential customers because they are not being hassled to purchase. They are simply informed with factual details about something that will enrich their lives in the long run, not drain it along with their money.
Source: Youtube
3. Snap and Search
Moving on to strictly how a picture or an image can help improve SEO, “Snap and Search” is the key phrase to understanding this search option. Search engines like Google or Bing allow for a desired item in a picture to be searched in order to find similar items. In Google, you have to access the “Images” section to be able to make a search based on an image.
This means that if you decide you really like that jacket you found on social media that someone is wearing and you want to figure out how much it costs and where you can purchase one exactly like it, all you would need to do is copy the image and paste it into your search bar.
From here, the search engine will find images and products that are most closely related to what you are looking for.
Therefore, the visual imagery you use on your website could be the deciding factor in whether a potential customer chooses you over a competitor. If your products are photographed beautifully with great lighting and presented in a few different settings to help your potential customer visualize if the item is going to work for them, your chances of selling your products are optimal.
Whereas if you decide you want to sell jackets on your online store, and only have one picture that is dimly lit or difficult to see, you will likely lose customers.
4. The Technical Side to Improve SEO Rankings
Remember, all the technical aspects of SEO still apply to images on your website. Even if you have the greatest, professionally shoot images of your products on your site, you still want to make sure you are doing the basics and the on-page SEO.
These basics include having an updated sitemap, using title tags for each image, and also using optimized “alt text” throughout your site’s content. Ensuring that your images have the highest quality and your copy is concise will easily help you become more “trustworthy” in the eyes of search engines.
5. Discover Features
Along with the “Snap and Search” search model, there is another search feature on more established search engines that will only feature very high-resolution images. The difference between these two features is that with Snap and Search, you can drop an image right into the search bar, and an entire catalog of images will appear that pertain to your search.
However, keep in mind this catalog will include highly relevant images, images that are low quality or pixelated, and sometimes search results that have nothing to do with what you are looking for. This can be an advantage to you if your website has professional high-quality photography because your images will stand out from the pictures that are not appealing enough or are too low quality.
With the new “Discover” feature, you will only find high-resolution, high-quality images that match your image search. This is great for consumers looking for products without having to dig through thousands of pictures that are unappealing to the eye. However, for business owners, you will need to make the quality of your images a significant priority to be considered in the “Discover” feature.
6. Load Time
People typically use their mobile devices much more frequently to search, shop, and scroll through websites daily. This is mainly due to convenience, and because mobile phones and tablets are fast! That being said, your website also needs to be fast.
It takes a person less than five seconds to click off a website that is taking too long to load.
“Too long to load” is now considered under five seconds, possibly even under 2 seconds in 2023. Making sure “your website is fast” is an understatement!
Images slow your website down, so don’t forget to compress your image files and optimize them for quick page speed load times.
7. Get Creative
Think up creative ways to explain your message visually using infographics. With the help of infographics, you can create detailed stories using bright and colorful illustrations that people enjoy looking at.
A great example of using an infographic is to explain how your business works. Breaking down your business into bite-sized pieces and pairing each snippet of information with an illustration that also shows what you mean is a fantastic way to keep people engaged.
Source: Youtube
8. Create Content Buckets
To avoid overwhelming your website visitors with too much clutter, it is helpful to break down your content ideas into their respective “buckets.” Digital marketers are familiar with this process as it helps to categorize ideas into formats that will make the most sense to potential customers when consumed.
Ideas like long-form step-by-step tutorials on how to use products you are selling might make the most sense in the blog section of your website. While a business that sells only one product can place a long-form step-by-step tutorial video introducing their featured product on the home page.
This allows the potential customer to understand whether your website has a bunch of cool products and engaging videos for each, or simply one really cool product that breaks down every aspect from how it was created to how it is used in a combination of content styles.
9. Improve SEO on Google Has a Power Word – Backlinks
While this point is not strictly about visual content, it is still crucial for your SEO strategy.
To keep it simple, backlinks are necessary for search engines to take your website more seriously. The more connections or backlinks you have with other blogs and reputable websites, the higher you will appear in search rankings due to your trustworthiness.
If you create a blog that lists someone else’s products that are complementary to yours, you can ask the owner of that product to link to your website as a way to promote each other. This simple transaction can help search engines view your site as more reputable than others that have zero backlinks. Amazon, for example, has hundreds of thousands of backlinks from other websites linking to their product pages.
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Your Content Strategy Doesn’t Deliver the Expected Results?
10. Be Consistent!
With all these tips, you will have to remain diligent in continuing to create high-quality content for your potential customers! The more you continue to put out valuable information, beautiful images, and well-thought-out content, the higher your website will rank over time. These tips will not increase your rankings overnight, but with determination and consistency, you can begin to see a difference in the months or years to come!
Invited Guest Writer:
Devin Schumacher is an internet entrepreneur and digital marketing consultant. Currently acting as CEO of SERP Co, a full-service digital marketing agency, Devin also advises & mentors numerous marketing consultants, agencies & local businesses as the head of SERP University – a place for learning cutting-edge digital marketing strategies, free. You can connect with him on Twitter or on LinkedIn.
