If you are like me, you try to perfect every piece of content you publish. For me, most of the time, this content consists of blog posts on two of my websites and videos on my YouTube channel. Images are an essential part of these pieces of content. Nevertheless, how often do you REALLY think about them before you post them? Images actually deserve a significant portion of the attention you pay to SEO. In this blog post, I will explain the importance of image SEO and share with you an infographic that offers a step-by-step guide for ranking in Google Images.
Image SEO: why should we care how images rank?
I just thought images were a nice additional way of attracting traffic to your website. Ryan Erskine showed me that it is much more than merely nice. He says that about one-fourth of all search traffic today happens on Google Images. To compare, search traffic on Bing and Yahoo combined is only 4.6%. He calls that mind-boggling and I agree.
As you can see, images receive a much larger share of search traffic than most people expect I knew that when someone looks you up in traditional web results, your images are likely to pop up in the featured image block, which is where you want to appear in to attract more traffic.
Erskine, however, talks about a new reason why images play a more prominent role today than they used to. Google recently changed its “view image” option. Previously, you could use a “view image” button to expand a thumbnail in Google Images into the larger version. Google removed that option, so you are now more likely to click the button that takes you to the hosting website to view the image there. Your top-ranking images will direct more traffic back to your websites and social media channels. According to Erskine, more traffic to your websites and channels means a higher level of control over your brand narrative and your first impression.
Image SEO infographic: a step-by-step guide for the best ranking of your images
Naturally, I now want to know how I can best post my pictures online so that I can increase my reach with them and present my brand better. I have found an infographic that visualizes the entire process of a good ranking.
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Here is the infographic I found:
What surprised me the most it that in the accompanying article, James Reynolds says that “without keywords, there is no such thing as image SEO” and that almost everybody ignores image keyword research. I am afraid I am guilty too.
If you can identify high-volume search terms for your images, Reynolds claims that you will benefit from a lot more search engine traffic, and you will move ahead of your competitors, who skip this crucial first step.
Help your brand
I have realized that I need to focus more on the work I put into my images. After all, creating blog posts is quite some work, and if these posts can have an enhanced reach with just a few simple steps, that is worth it.
