One of the most important and easiest ways to attract more traffic and visitors to a website can be done by optimizing images. Hence, we can say that images are unsung heroes of traffic generation.
We are already aware that keywords, SEO, and great content lead to more traffic to your websites. So using images can be another useful tool to drive more traffic.
Picture optimization is said to be one of the most failed to observed elements of search engine optimization (SEO).
Google images play a major role in terms of image optimization. Google search engine can not only help a user to search for text-based content, but it also allows users to look for images.
Hence it’s quite unfortunate when many business users tend to overlook Google Image Search when they reconnoiter the best ways in which they can promote their brand or drive traffic to their respective websites. The goal of this article is to discuss the image optimization process and how it further drives more traffic to your website.
Let’s first look at some statistical facts with the traffic one gets using Google image. It’s known that visual content makes content far more interesting and a lot less dull.
- Google image gets a total of more than 1 billion views a day.
- Around 10% of main traffic is generated from image.google.com. This shows how a huge amount of traffic is drive utilizing Google image.
As a user, optimizing the Google Image Search is quite simple, and traffic gains one gets in return, remunerates for the efforts. A user can easily leverage Google Images to drive more visitors to their site.
What is an Image Search on Google?
Image Search is used to search for a term and search for images related to the text the user enters. Google Images can help the user to drive traffic to their websites. Also nowadays Google is adding more and more contexts to the photos in the image search result, which presents the user’s website with a new opportunity to attract traffic.
How to Optimize Images for Google?
For image optimization, we need to consider three major goals.
- Include images that support your page ranking and traffic. Meaning; Images must relate to the keyword that you’re ranking for on the page. For example, if the user is optimizing for “mobile phones”, then you should not only include pictures of mobile phones on the page but also optimize those images for that particular keyword. So it’s important to make sure that separate search engine results are based on how images are optimized. Hence, if the user wants to optimize a page for keywords, he or she needs to optimize the images in addition to the texts.
- The second goal includes ranking the Google Image Search. Google has specifically designed its search engine for men and women who are looking for images. The user must make sure that the pictures rank well in that search engine as it is an awesome way to generate the word out about your brand. For example, if one searches for “conversation rate optimization” in Google Image Search; the top results are is a featured image for conversation rate optimization. And the information about the image is shared by Google right next to the image itself, as seen in the above picture. So if any image shows up in the Google Image Search result, people will have the chance to click on the link to the website and learn more about what the website has to offer. This can be said as a fantastic way to attract more traffic to the website, which in return attracts more attention to the business.
- The final goal of image optimization is to allow images to display correctly on pay-per-click or social media. When the user posts their content on social media, they would want their image to look good and that can be made sure by image optimization.
Create Visual content that speaks to Leads
When the users are trying to create content, it’s always a good practice to start with the keywords, rather than writing random things and compelling the keywords in the content. In the same way, when optimizing for image search, it’s better to start with keywords and continue forward with it. Most of the time keywords naturally lend themselves to visual content, because most of the time it’s easier to showcase a process visually rather than simply explain it with the help of texts. That is why catalogs usually come with instructions full of images rather than text-heavy content.
Another way is to set up a marketing campaign in AdWords, so the visitors will be able to see the businesses displayed ads for a while. If the customer keeps looking for information in the field, the customers may need more help, in the form of products or services. Or by promoting the website visitors for signing up to the email list, allowing the business to nurture their visitors with targeted offers.
Usage of Relevant Images
It’s not a good idea to fill up the website page with a bunch of irrelevant pictures as it would not make much sense. Hence it is best to keep the content crispy and tight, which can be done with the help of Google images and therefore increasing the traffic.
A good approach is to use certain rare pictures found on the internet or trying pictures of actors or actresses which can help the website get a good amount of traffic to the websites.
Business users can also use infographics on their websites to strengthen their SEO keywords.
Image sizing for Google Image Search
Another major step implemented for image optimization is by making sure that the images are of the correct sizes. If the image used is too small, it may result in a lesser value to the website page of the business. While the image being too big, may end up taking excessive time to load the website page.
The perfect size for the images is solely depending upon the width of the area where the content is displayed. An example if the content area is 1400 pixels wide but 400 pixels of the pixels are used by the sidebars, then the optimal size is 1400-400 or 1000 pixels. It’s based on how the website appears on the screen or the monitor. In such a case, the image should be no wider than 1000 pixels, otherwise, the website would just compress them so that they fit in the content area. There is, of course, another option of using an image that is smaller than 1000 pixels in size.
Although it would leave some space around the image, which is white in color so that it can be differentiated. Also if a user is using Photoshop, the user should make sure that they use the “Save for Web” option while saving the image, as the option will conserve the rectitude of the image while reducing the file size. This smaller file size will ensure that the website page loads at a much faster pace.
Image Format
Another important question is the type of image format one should use? Well, that depends upon the user’s choice. It is commonly said that JPEG is used as a standard image that is mostly used in web pages. Using the PNG or GIF format is considered as a more sophisticated form of an image, such as corporate images logo or different types of marketing graphics.
Conclusion
Most people give way more importance to things such as keywords and Meta descriptions forgetting about the most basic thing, Images.
Pictures are very important, especially in the case of the advanced phases of SEO. People are always looking for images for various kinds of reasons, be it for an article or videos. Hence, driving traffic through Image Search is very powerful and extremely easy. It can help businesses to drive the traffic to the website pages with the assistance of using Google images.
