Yes, images have a meaningful role to play in your brand’s wider SEO
For many online business owners, there can be an inclination to think that images are somewhat detached as a factor from their broader site’s search engine optimisation (SEO) performance.
You might have imagined that if you don’t feel a need to achieve good rankings for your site in Google Images, there’s little need to think about your brand’s images from an SEO perspective.
But that wouldn’t be an accurate perception. The reality is, well-optimised images can very much support your brand’s wider efforts to rank well in the search engines – and below are some of the aspects in which that is the case.
Images frequently appear in organic search results…
Google has already been taking steps for years to blend image search with conventional organic searches, so the two of them have gone hand in hand for quite some time now. And this makes sense, given that if a human performs a search for something, seeing accompanying pictures on the results page is likely to help make their search experience more informative and relevant.
For a very simple demonstration of this from the perspective of ecommerce, input a search for a product type, such as ‘barbecue grills’. You will almost certainly see plenty of images of barbecue grills – from various potential sources – on the search results page that appears.
So, if you want your online store’s products to potentially be featured among such images when someone performs a Google search, it is in your interests to ensure those images are as compelling, high-quality, and pertinent as possible.
…as well as in featured snippets and knowledge panels
A ‘featured snippet’, in case you aren’t aware, is a highlighted excerpt of text from a website, which Google sometimes places at the top of the search engine results for given queries.
Images can often appear alongside such excerpts. So, if you are seeking to capture a featured snippet for certain queries that your target audience might search for, it would be a sensible move to have a good image – or several – on the relevant webpage of yours.
OK, so you know what a featured snippet is – but what about a ‘knowledge panel’? This refers to the information box that often now appears on a results page when someone performs a Google search for a given brand, person, or place.
A search for ‘Apple Inc’, for instance, throws up a knowledge panel (on the right-hand side if you’re searching on a desktop computer) with some brief, digestible information about Apple, the computer company – including its stock price, customer service number, CEO, and so on.
If you performed the above search, you will have noticed the use of the Apple logo in that knowledge panel. Of course, your firm isn’t Apple. But if your brand could well feature in a knowledge panel, it would be a good idea to use your Google Business Profile dashboard to upload some top-quality images, which Google could then draw upon for the knowledge panel.
Don’t forget about image search, either
Hopefully, we have made it clear enough in this article so far that Google Images is not a completely separate entity to the rest of Google organic search. For one thing, Google pulls from image search to populate knowledge panels and carousels with relevant images, so your brand shouldn’t really ignore image optimisation.
Google has put together its own helpful guide to the effective optimisation of images, encompassing such vital aspects as making sure the images you use load quickly, as well as that the images look sharp and high in quality, instead of unclear and blurry. And of course, our team at Piranha Designs can help optimise your brand’s images as part of our broader SEO services.
In fact, whether you are on the lookout for the best website design, graphic design, ecommerce, or PHP development companies in Gibraltar, Spain or the UK, you can be sure of us bringing you the benefits of our expertise in these areas when you contact our team.
