Most business owners will do anything to increase customer traffic, convert more leads, and to increase their organic search rankings. And while basic content, keywords, and meta tags can do wonders to increase your SEO, there is one major, often overlooked factor that contributes to your site’s ranking: user experience, or how easy or pleasing your website is to the users of your website. It is understandable that clear, crisp, high quality images and supporting videos will boost your site’s overall user experience. What’s easier (or more pleasing) than seeing a good picture?
As a business, you can easily enhance user experience on your website by including high-quality images and videos. Adding great images is the best and effective way by which you can improve your site’s user experience and, at the same time, give your SEO a bump. In this article we cover the basic benefits of adding High quality or HD photos to your website.
1. Using high quality images to enhance your SEO
Google purely believes that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Instead of telling users what your sign looks like with two paragraphs of copy, just take a wonderful picture! By adding content and pictures to your website, you will be able to describe your business and provide useful visuals to users.
However, search engine bots cannot see “images” – they depend on the file name, caption, alt text and title texts of the image. You must also ensure that your images are of the correct file size, responsive and scalable so that your website still loads quickly on any device. Using the correct alt text and title texts in your images would certainly give a good boost to your SEO.
When uploading high quality images to your website, take these factors into account:
Images should be directly related to the content of your site: This seems very straight forward, but it is important to relate your visual content (Images) towards the written content on your website. For example, if your content discusses the benefits of your climate-controlled units, then it would be ideal to provide a picture of those units.
Must include alt text descriptions and image title tags: Alt text descriptions and title tags are designed for the visually impaired, providing a brief sketch of your images that can be read by the program. They are crawled by search engine bots and are therefore important to help your site’s rank. But don’t put your tag with keywords – describe the image the same way you would describe someone who can’t see it.
Use smart file names: Don’t forget to name your images as something that relates to the image or your website. For example, if your image is a picture of your business products, then it should be clear in the file name – this means renaming files that are a function of letters and numbers, such as “DSC9120”, or something which describes the picture’s main topics, such as “business-product”
Work with website experts: Knowing that file size, page load time, and responsive design are important to SEO however is not enough – you need to be able to apply this knowledge to your site. By working with an expert web marketing or digital marketing team, you will be able to add high quality images to your site in a way that makes your website functional and fast for users across all devices.
It is always better to include images than no images at all: You definitely want to add the best quality images to your website, but if you don’t have a high-resolution camera or don’t have the money to pay the photographer, in that case uploading pictures from your phone or basic camera is more valuable than not uploading images to your website.
Beyond pleasing search engine bots as they index your site, images also provide you with the opportunity to please your human users and reduce the website’s bounce rate. The bounce rate of a site is measured by analysing the number of users who return to search results without seeing further pages on a website. A high bounce rate is bad: it means users are looking at your site and running back to search results to find a site that looks better than yours. When you have great images, your website can engage users to click through your pages, helping to reduce the bounce rate of your site.
SEO experts have concluded, if users are given pictures to view, they will remain on the site for a longer period. Adding pictures to your site give two great benefits with the energy of one: it affects both your users’ experience and your ranking by lowering the bounce rate.
2. Using high quality images to convert your leads
Useful, high-quality images will attract more visitors to your site by increasing the SEO value of your site and lowering your bounce rate. It is very clear, however did you know that the increased user engagement of your site can also be the result of a longer journey for users, giving you more time to sell your product through both content and pictures?
If your goal is to facilitate online move-in or reservation through your site, then you want users to be able to hang out on the site for as long as possible. Your images help tell the story of your product and clarify your business offering by providing easy-to-scan information.
High-quality photographs will help convert your online leads by:
- Gathering more visitors for your site, which means more chances to convert.
- Help increasing user engagement, which means that users spend more time on your web
- Decrease in bounce rate, meaning more traffic and higher ranking.
- Creating a link between the customer and the company, meaning that users are more likely to choose your services.
3. Using image quality to sell your product
If you ever read a children’s book, you know how important pictures are. Why? Because the pictures help tell the story! Like in a children’s book, pictures help tell the story of your website’s services and create a sense of trust between your business and your customers. Crisp and clear images can help show users how clean, secure and well-organized your business is, which works toward the end goal of converting a potential lead into a purchasing customer.
For great results, you want to use the highest quality, highest resolution photographs. With today’s trend of Instagram and social media influencers, online users first notice the quality of your images. Because quality heavily affects their decision to buy, you want to use your highest quality images.
There are some more benefits of using high quality images to your website:
They fit well into modern web design: large, relevant, high-quality images are an integral part of putting together a well-crafted website that achieves results.
They drive the promotion of your business and brand: Having a collection of clean, professional-looking images makes it easy to re-purpose images for use around your office, on brochures, or in other internet directories like Yelp, Google My Business, and more.
They bring consistency to your social media accounts: adding your images to all your social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram can further enhance your online presence.
4. What to do next
What now? Where can you get these high-quality, high-resolution photos of your facility and its features? The good news is that you already have a high-quality camera, and it is in your back pocket. Today’s smartphone can take awesome pictures, and with these tips, you’ll also be able to take web-worthy pictures of your brand with your iPhone or android.
If photography is not your cup of tea, then you want to find an inexpensive, professional photographer (or a friend with a DSLR camera) who can help you take some best shots. They should have the necessary knowledge of light, angle and colour to make your brand look impeccable. In addition, they will provide edited, digital copies of images in whatever format you need. Sometimes, your website developer or internet marketing service provider will have a staff photographer whose fee is included in the cost of your website. Check with your provider if they offer these integrated services.
No matter how you get your images, your first goal should be to provide the best user experience on your website that you can. Pictures will help you completely in that. With the right images, original content and SEO knowledge, you will bring in more leads, increase conversions and see higher rankings.
