It seems like many folks aren’t always quite sure how best to use images for their websites. They know that images should be part of a design strategy, but don’t necessarily know just what that strategy consists of or how to implement it. This results in images just being used as filler to make the site look pretty. This is fine; however, there’s so much more that can be done with images. After all, images are an absolutely essential component of a website, and here’s why.
Visitors Appreciate Quality Images
Images help tell the story, and website visitors love a good story. This is especially true when they images used are totally on topic and work together with the content of the page to improve the overall message conveyed. Depending on the site’s topic and audience, it’s almost always better to go for images that complement the site’s written content versus the more abstract or artsy concepts.
Images Can Help The Optimization Of A Site
Using the right images in a website allows for more space in the site’s code to explain to the search engines what the site is really all about. Search engines factor in these honest behind the scenes cues as they try to determine what the site’s topic is. This isn’t a sneaky trick or anything, but instead, a common practice used in search optimization.
Receive Benefit From Image Searches
It’s no secret that image searches can deliver major traffic to a website. If you’re not familiar with image search, the major search engines all have an option to search just for images. Also, relevant images can show at the top of regular search listings too. By placing appropriate context matching images throughout a website or blog, the world of image search is wide open – funneling plenty of image search queries your site’s way.
Images Will Only Become More And More Important
Let’s consider the ongoing improvements in image recognition technology. How perfect would it be for search engines to simply be able to compare the textual content to what the images on that page depict? It would improve their results accuracy and reliability drastically. Don’t expect that this algorithm capability hasn’t already been used to some extent. It’s a safe bet to say it is being used already in select cases and will only continue to be utilized as a tool to improve relevancy of search results.
Images are indeed an essential component of websites. And with all of the ways images can help to attract visitors and keep them around once they’ve made the click, it should come as no surprise just how essential they are.
George Chaney
President/CEO
SEO King, Inc.
