(Photo by Edward Berthelot/Getty Images)
Looking to push down some unsavory college photos in Google Images? Or perhaps you’d simply like to increase the number of positive images that show up in order to take better control of your personal brand.
Either way, you’ve come to the right place.
In this post, I provide a blueprint to improve the images that show up for a specific keyword (your name, for example). The basics of image optimization are similar to traditional search engine optimization, but there are some important differences too.
Without further ado, let’s get started.
Why Do We Care About Image Rankings?
Why are we talking about image rankings anyway? Who cares?
Consider this: about one-fourth of all search traffic today happens on Google Images.
That’s mind boggling. That’s five times more search traffic than Bing and Yahoo get combined (4.6%). That’s eighty times more search traffic than Google News gets (0.28%).
Images receive a much larger share of search traffic than many give them credit for. Even in cases when someone looks you up in traditional web results, your images are likely to pop up in Google’s featured image block as one of your top results.
That’s especially true for searches of people. Google your few fellow executives, employees, and entrepreneurs — chances are, you’ll see 5-7 highlighted images embedded on the first page of their search results.
There’s one last reason images play a bigger role today than they used to: Google’s recent “view image” changes.
Google used to offer a “view image” button to expand a thumbnail in Google Images into the larger version of the image all by itself. By removing that option, Google increases the chance that visitors will click the “Visit” website button to view the image in the context of the webpage it’s hosted on.
That ultimately means more traffic back to the websites and social media channels that host your top-ranking images. And more traffic to your positive properties means a higher level of control over your brand narrative and your first impression.
Leverage What You’ve Got
One of the most effective ways to land more positive photos at the top of your Google Image results is to leverage your web properties that already rank well.
For instance, do you have a personal website or a corporate bio ranking on page 1? Or perhaps a high-ranking LinkedIn or Twitter profile?
Google trusts these website and social media profiles, which is why they rank well for your name. By uploading well-optimized headshots to those platforms, you give yourself the best chance of catapulting desired photos to the top of your image results.
The key, of course, is optimizing them properly. Despite advancements in image recognition, Google still uses various shortcuts to deduce which images deserve to rank for certain keywords and which ones don’t.
These ranking factors can be roughly boiled down to five elements:
- Image File Name: When you save an image to your computer, ditch the automatic file name gibberish. Instead, create a name that succinctly describes the contents of the image. If I’m trying to get a headshot to rank for my name, a great file name would be Ryan-Erskine-BrandYourself-Headshot.jpg. A horrible example is IMG_9999.
- Image Size & Dimensions: Unless your audience is looking for gigantic wallpaper versions of your headshots, compress the size down to something more reasonable. A compressed image means a better load speed, and a better load speed means a better user experience. Ryan Ayres, owner of Eye9 Design, suggests keeping it under 100kb. “If all of your images are under this number, you’re doing okay. If possible, try to keep all images at or below 75kb.” It’s also good idea to make sure the image fits a common set of dimensions, like 16:9, 4:3, or square. Anything stretched too far vertically or horizontally is likely to do you more harm than good.
- Image Metadata: While it’s also helpful for accessibility reasons, image metadata serves as an important ranking factor. Once you’ve uploaded an image, pay attention to the meta title, caption, alt text, and description. Social media channels usually don’t give you as much ability to tinker with these elements as websites do, but the more diligently you fill these out, the better off you’ll be.
- Image Engagement: This is pretty self-explanatory — images that get more clicks and views tend to get more love from Google.
- Hosted Page Elements: The page URL, the page title, and even the surrounding text all help Google determine the relevance of your image for a particular keyword. By communicating these important details about your images, you improve Google’s understanding of the contents and boost their likelihood to rank for the right keywords. “This is one of the reasons, by the way, that galleries of images, especially inside stock photo galleries, don’t tend to do very well,” says Rand Fishkin, Founder of Sparktoro.
Get Yourself A Bigger Tool Belt
Even if you perfectly optimize images on all your high-ranking platforms, that still only gets you a handful more images at best. If your goal is to push down something unpleasant or really flood the web with positive images, you’ll need to take it a step further.
If you don’t already have the most authoritative social media profiles, you’ll want to reserve and optimize them now.
Yes, we’re talking LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. But we’re also talking Crunchbase, Quora, and Medium. (You can sometimes still get a profile photo from About.me to ran if you’re lucky.)
Social media platforms with a heavy focus on images are great too. While their profile images don’t rank very often, the uploaded images do. For that reason, try building up a presence on Instagram and Pinterest, and upload original photos to platforms like Flickr and 500px.
Why so many profiles? Think of it this way: you can’t guarantee which profiles or images Google will choose to rank, so having the most tools at your disposal gives you the best chance of achieving your goal.
Merely having those profiles usually isn’t enough. It’s only through consistent activity and the natural growth of engagement metrics that proves to Google your profile (and its associated image) is relevant enough to rank well for your name.
Creative Tactics That Will Give You An Edge
If you Google any high-profile executive, entrepreneur, or celebrity, chances are their top-ranking images are sourced mostly from news articles.
The reason is simple: Google inherently trusts those publications. When it comes to getting images to rank for people’s names — either positive or negative — interviews and press are golden opportunities.
So seek out opportunities for interviews, Q&As, and press releases for yourself. Any article that is primarily about you and optimized for your name is likely to help. Of course, confirm first that you can include your headshot, and do everything you can to optimize the image properly for your name (see above).
Videos are another great tactic. If you have any original video content — especially footage of you in an interview, a Q&A, or a panel — try uploading it to Youtube and Vimeo. It might seem counterintuitive to use video content to improve image results, but it’s common for Google to rank thumbnails from videos that are super relevant and well-optimized for your name.
Finally, consider using Slideshare to give your image-ranking efforts a final boost. Eighty million professionals use Slideshare, LinkedIn’s presentation platform, to post and view slide decks, presentations, and infographics.
If you’re diligent about optimizing your slideshows and the images therein, you have a strong chance of convincing Google to rank the individual slides for your name.
Make It Your Own
If you’re already lucky enough to have high-ranking press, then make the most of it! Amplify those articles, boost its engagement metrics, and earn valuable backlinks. If you have a Wikipedia profile, try uploading a copyright-free image that meets Wikipedia’s guidelines.
Ultimately, an effective image campaign requires a multi-pronged approach that includes many of the above strategies. There’s no shortcut to search engine optimization — whether text or images — and your success will depend on how well you leverage your own unique opportunities.
Ryan Erskine is Manager of Client Services at BrandYourself. Visit his website, follow him on Twitter, and read his book here.