Never underestimate the power of visual content.<\/p>\n
Put yourself in potential customers\u2019 shoes: if you landed on a website looking for a specific product or service, would you be impressed if there were no images? Would you feel this was a dynamic brand that cared about engaging buyers?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unlikely one page after another consisting of blocks of text would win you over. Images are essential to convey information that complements your copy: you need to show off your products \/ services, introduce your team (even if just a few members) and, ultimately, make your website exciting to look at.<\/p>\n
Images can make a big difference to your SEO campaign, and in this post, we look at 5 essential tips you need to know.<\/p>\n
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Be Original<\/strong><\/p>\n Stock images definitely have their place. Quality stock pictures can fill a gap and still add a professional touch to your site, but use them sparingly.<\/p>\n Users will recognize stock images when they appear on countless sites, and if they see them on yours, they may feel it makes you a little less credible. Use original pictures as much as you can to be authentic, and ensure they\u2019re of a high quality.<\/p>\n Slick, polished images help you stand out in search results and make your site unique.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Don\u2019t Overload your Site<\/strong><\/p>\n Too much visual content can affect your site\u2019s performance, causing pages to load slower than they should.<\/p>\n JPEG images are typically best for maintaining decent load times, and cope well with compression, allowing images to load faster without too much of a drop in quality. PNG images are of a higher quality but too many can strain your load times.<\/p>\n Consider using PNG files for your most crucial images and JPEGs for the rest.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Keep your Captions Specific<\/strong><\/p>\n Captions are a useful addition to your images. This is a brief line or two of text that explains the picture\u2019s purpose, allowing readers to understand what they\u2019re seeing straight away.<\/p>\n Captions can help search engines identify how relevant your images are to users.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Apply Descriptive Names to Images<\/strong><\/p>\n Like captions, descriptive file names with quality keywords let search engines know the image\u2019s content. It has to put the picture in context and boost your chances of being discovered by a user.<\/p>\n If a prospect runs an image search, a descriptive title can get your website put on clear display, hopefully driving more traffic your way.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Keep Background Images Minimal<\/strong><\/p>\n Images in your page backgrounds and \/ or borders may add satisfying decoration to your site, but they only add extra data that has to be loaded.<\/p>\n If you find your site is taking longer to load, non-essential images like these could be to blame. You have to balance images that add obvious visual appeal with those that don\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Never underestimate the power of visual content. Put yourself in potential customers\u2019 shoes: if you landed on a website looking for a specific product or service, would you be impressed if there were no images? Would you feel this was a dynamic brand that cared about engaging buyers? It\u2019s unlikely one page after another consisting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,95,70,74],"tags":[96,103,102,6,62,61],"class_list":["post-748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content-marketing","category-landing-pages","category-search-engine-optimization-2","category-social-media-marketing","tag-orange-county-marketing","tag-orange-county-search-engine-optimization","tag-orange-county-seo","tag-search-engine-marketing","tag-search-engine-optimization","tag-seo"],"yoast_head":"\n