Making the Most of Your Logo and Website Photos with Image SEO

The images on your website play an important role in making sure your small business remains competitive. For example, your logo has to keep up with the latest design trends if you want people to take your brand seriously. Images and your logo are essential in making your online platforms, from social media accounts to business websites, effective marketing channels.

Today, learn why pictures and images on your website are essential and how you can make the most out of them with image search engine optimization. You’ll also discover a few tips that can help you outrank competitors on search engines through your logo and other pictures on your website.  

The Importance of Pictures

Pictures, and your company logo, in particular, serve several important functions on your website. 

Here are some of the benefits of using great images and logos on your site. 

• Your logo retains attention

According to eye-tracking studies, the eyes of readers begin and stay the longest on the upper-left corner of any page. This is why your logo should occupy that spot, along with any other essential images and data. Studies show that viewers spent over 6.4 seconds looking at your brand mark. This means you have to make sure your logo not only captures the attention of your audience but that it also meaningfully showcases what your small business is all about. A logo represents the entirety of your enterprise, and, given its place of prominence, it should communicate this as clearly as possible.

• People are visual creatures

People will be more receptive to your content if it is not presented as a single continuous wall of text. Images draw the eye and give your readers something else to look at. They can engage your audience, providing them with more information. For example, useful diagrams can simplify complicated processes, photos can showcase the beauty of products, and the right graphic can entice visitors to your site to continue scrolling through the page.

Now with the development of AI tools like AI image generator, you can easily create images within a few minutes.

• Your logo builds your brand

Your logo will be the most recognizable facet of your brand because people will spend such a long time looking at it. Using it often throughout your website helps establish your small business’s visual identity. The power of your logo extends to platforms and channels outside of your website. 

For example, posts on your social media account can be quickly recognized if they have the logo on the photo. Email to clients and prospective customers could be read more often if they see your logo and recognize it before consigning your correspondence to the spam folder.

Logos and other images on your website provide these benefits, but they can offer your business so much more. A great silhouette logo can be great for brand recognition and getting the attention of readers. But with the right techniques, it can boost your online rankings. 

All it takes is for you to employ a digital marketing method known as image search engine optimization. This method can increase online traffic to your small business’s website and help you outrank your competition on search engines. 

What is Image SEO?

You may have a passing familiarity with search engine optimization or SEO, one of the facets of digital marketing. It uses techniques that make your sites more attractive to search engines. For example, SEO often involves changing your website content to include keywords seamlessly. This will help search engines prioritize your website when users look for these terms. 

Image search engine optimization is a technique routinely offered by digital marketing companies. However, it’s not one of the more common SEO services for small businesses. It entails optimizing the metadata and specifications of your logo and other pictures on your site. These alterations allow search engine programs known as spiders to detect the information and use it to boost your website’s ranking. 

Why is Image SEO Important?

But why is image SEO such an important tool for small businesses? How can it be useful in ensuring your enterprise remains profitable and ahead of the competition? 

Here are some of the best reasons a small enterprise should incorporate image SEO into its strategy.

• Most small businesses have no SEO plan

Search engine optimization is fast becoming a necessity rather than an option in today’s digital market. However, as recently as 2020, only 30 percent of small businesses had search engine optimization strategies. This represents huge missed opportunities for growth and increased profitability. Given the number of potential customers who now turn to Google and other search engines to look for businesses, collaborating with your chosen SEO agency and incorporating your logo and website images when developing an SEO strategy can be essential in securing their patronage.

• Image searches account for a lot of Internet traffic

Google takes the lion’s share in terms of internet traffic. According to recent data, the search engine accounted for over 62 percent of all internet traffic. Google image searches accounted for a further 22 percent of internet traffic. By comparison, Facebook, the largest of all social media platforms, is only 1.4 percent of internet traffic. Image searches represent hundreds of millions of people sifting through pictures on Google. When your business logo and website images are optimized, this can draw numerous online users to your digital platforms.

• SEO strategies need to be holistic

If you belong to the 30 percent of small businesses with an SEO strategy, you need to be smart about it. An effective SEO strategy calls for a holistic approach to optimizing your site. This entails not just improving the content and adjusting the design. It also includes making sure your logo and website images contribute to improving your search engine results ranking. By employing strategies that offer complete optimization of your website, you increase your chance of staying on top.

• It will help you outrank competitors

Millions of small businesses have their own website. Some of them will inevitably encroach on your territory, whether because they’re local businesses or because you are targeting the same consumer base. 

Appearing first in search engine results is an invaluable edge because most people can’t be bothered to check the second page of results. Results on the second page of a search engine have click-through-rates of less than 1 percent. Your website cannot convince people to become customers if they don’t click on it. Outranking competitors and securing a spot on the first page of results is invaluable for remaining in business. Applying local SEO techniques aside from Image SEO can also help a small business get its target audience. For example, businesses in Dubai can incorporate local SEO Dubai techniques by creating local content to further enhance their visibility. 

Tips for Image SEO

If you’re employing a search engine optimization strategy, but have no clue on how to begin integrating images, you have a few options. You could look for professionals who can guide you through the process. There are SEO providers in Detroit, Miami, and most urban centers in the country. If you’d rather do things on your own, you can employ some simple tactics that will help your logo and images contribute to boosting your ranking. 

The file extension of your logo and various images on your website matters. There is no single image format that will fit all your needs for your website. The right image format can improve site performance and ensure search engines rank it higher. For example, PNG images are of much better quality, but their file sizes are larger. This means they can slow down site load speed, which can put off some users. 

On the other hand, JPEG images aren’t as crisp as PNG, but they have smaller file sizes. Choosing the correct format for your site is essential in maintaining a balance between pleasing your users and enhancing performance.

Image resolution and image file size are two different things. File size refers to how much data the image takes up and is measured in bytes. Image resolution refers to how big the actual image is and is measured in pixels. The better the resolution, the crisper the image, but it could also mean the file size increases. This, as mentioned above, can slow down your website. 

According to experts, 39 percent of online users will leave a website if the pictures take too long to appear. But you can have high-quality images without sacrificing load speed by compressing your images. This will reduce their file size while keeping their resolution reasonably high.

Alt-text are the words that appear when you hover your cursor over a picture. One of their primary purposes is to describe the image. They’re useful tools for screen-to-speech translators and help convey a page’s content to the visually impaired. Ensure each image on your site has an appropriate alt-text because search engine spiders will assess them. Even better, you can use keywords on the alt-text to make sure they actively contribute to boosting your ranking for those specific terms. 

• Choose the Right File Name

Search engine spiders will also inspect or crawl the file names of your logo and images. Instead of using a string of nonsensical letters and numbers or bland names like “image01,” you should use keywords for your file names. This means the spiders will have more to crawl and more information they can use to increase your ranking. 

Finally, resist the temptation to only use stock images from the internet. These images are used by countless other businesses, meaning they don’t help your ranking at all. Unique pictures are cataloged by search engines and can stand out to users. You don’t even have to spend a lot of money to come up with unique, high-quality images. A good smartphone camera and basic photo editing skills can give your website the appealing pictures it needs.

Your business logo is an essential component of your brand, but it can be so much more. With image SEO, your logo can help push your business to new heights and help build a solid foundation for your small business on the digital horizon.  

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Written by DesignCrowd on Friday, February 26, 2021

DesignCrowd is an online marketplace providing logo, website, print and graphic design services by providing access to freelance graphic designers and design studios around the world.