As the web industry evolves, search engine optimization (SEO) evolves with it. There are more ways to rank your website other than website text content. Think about it – what elements make up your website? Do you have pictures, text, and/or videos? There’s clear proof that content paired with images works better than content without images. Visual graphics assist the human mind with making connections better and faster than simple text.
Almost anything on a website can be optimized and can contribute to your google search rank. Images and videos play a large part in whether or not a potential customer can see your site.
Top Industries Benefitting from Image Search
Companies that have a visual product should optimize their images and videos to receive the best results on their web page. Here are a few industry examples:
- Events
- Design
- Photography
- Film and Videography
If your industry is creative and aesthetically pleasing to the eye, make the most with the content you have. Chances are, you have a lot to work with.
Tips for SEO Copywriting and Visual SEO
Optimizing SEO text versus visuals is similar to an extent. The two identify with the same purpose (to reach an audience), but differ in the process you use to optimize the content.
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Understanding SEO Copywriting
Like most types of website content, there is an extensive process for writing content for search engine optimization. In fact, it’s more than a process – it’s understanding your user. If you can relate to your user well, Google will rank you accordingly. How can you appeal most to your customer?
Here are a few general guidelines to follow when optimizing your web content:
- Research, research, research. Know who your customers are, and what attracts them the most. Writing will be easier, and Google appreciates your effort to understand the readers.
- Find competitive keywords and keyword phrases, and use them frequently. Google bots scan for those specific keywords and rank you competitively.
- Have a fast site speed. No matter how patient your readers might be in person, waiting for a page to load sways a reader to exit from the page. If the customer waits for the page to load, that customer might feel unsatisfied about what he or she is reading.
- Modify your meta description. Meta descriptions are the snippets of information that summarize your page. They are usually no longer than 160 characters. What’s the purpose? To improve click-through rates.
- Write relevant and useful content (from the user’s point of view). Blogs should be at least 300 words to be ranked.
Optimizing Web Images
Obviously, you’re not going to create a writing strategy when you optimize images and videos. However, there are a few tricks you can use with your visual content.
Use relevant, informational graphics. Pair images with every social media post, blog, and long forms of content within your website. It also might be a good idea to make sure the images correlate with each other in terms of design.
Have a good image size. The size of your image depends on the rest of the website. Ideally, you would want the least amount of code and the smallest size image possible (while still making everything look visually pleasing). Because images affect the site speed, and site speed affects your rank in Google, having quality images is crucial in your optimization.
Be as unique as possible. Stock images are difficult to rank due to the pool of websites that already use that image. If you want to rank in Google Image Search, having unique images is a plus.
Alter the image’s information. Some may say that title tags are unnecessary. However, when paired with an alt tag that contains your focus keyword, Google can understand the topic of your image and considers that during your ranking.
Conclusion
Visually centered industries such as design and events would benefit from visual optimization because, simply put, not all industries see a large ROI from visual content marketing. The little details about the image take time to edit and may not be worth it when you receive your SEO reporting. Instead, companies should understand their strengths, and what content is best to optimize.
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