How visual content contributes to improving your SEO and how to take advantage of it
It's no secret that visual content is a growing trend. That is why content in video formats, infographics, GIFs, memes, among others, should be part of your content strategy. However, did you know that this impacts the SEO of your website?
How does visual content impact your SEO?
Adding visual content to your website adds a lot of value. While written content naturally allows you to incorporate keywords, ideal for search engines, the visual content you add to your site or elsewhere can generate a greater impact.
- Video content keeps your visitors on your site
One statistic that Google loves is the time users spend on a page. If your site visitors leave after 10 seconds, for Google it means that your content is bad or irrelevant. By including video pieces in the middle of your written content, you can get users to spend more time on your pages.
Think of it like this. Let's say it takes someone 10 seconds to read the first 2 paragraphs of your article and then, within your article, there is a video that users can easily access. This content mix will allow you to add more value, both for users who are more used to reading, and for those who prefer audiovisual content.
Users who click to view the article may end up watching the full video. This motivates your visitors to delve into your pages and before they imagine they have been on your website for 5 minutes. This can give you a significant boost to your site permanence stats.
Video content also impacts statistics such as bounce rate, which is also very important to Google. This metric shows negatively when users enter your pages and leave quickly. That is why video content can reduce this action by causing your audience to interact more with your content.
- Images help guide your users through your content.
Reading a 1000 word article, no matter how well written it is, can easily become a boring task. To keep your visitors entertained through your content, you can add infographics, illustrative images and much more, to help the reader visualize the concepts you are presenting and thus motivate them to continue on your website.
Interspersing your content with audiovisual resources related to the text gives your reader a break to absorb the message and understand what you have just explained in a more didactic way. This type of content also allows you to highlight a complex topic or statistics that contribute to generating a better impact.
- Google's Machine Learning tool is learning to read images.
Although it is not clear how 100% works, it is well known that Google is actively learning to read images on pages. With billions of images online, Google's Machine Learning technology has become adept at using shapes and other elements to compare and understand what images on a site represent.
This point sells itself. If Google is focusing on learning how to track something and then attributing it to the value that a site brings to the internet, you should pay attention to it. This is why you need to make sure that your images are relevant and in a format that Google can read them in.
How to use images to boost your SEO?
Now that you know the why, let's get into the how. In this part it is important to go a little deeper and explore some of the ways you can apply visual marketing to your efforts to improve your SEO.
- Make sure your images contribute to your story
There is a great deal of value in adding graphics, images, and other content that actually relates to your article. There is definitely less value in adding generic images that simply represent abstract concepts and add nothing to the story.
For example, the following is an image related to the topic of artificial intelligence and machine learning but that certainly does not add value to the content.
