When you are ready to add visual search as a part of your content marketing, you need a path to get started and what to do next. These tips and tricks for adding visual search to your site will give you the next steps to get it incorporated into your regular routine and improve your marketing right away.
Top Visual Search Sources and Providers
While the technology is still being perfected and needs a lot of work, you can be ready by paying close attention to what other sites are doing-especially sites like Pinterest which are more visually based. They’re going to spend more money implementing and creating new technologies for visual search. Just tune in to the changes they are making and what they are spending time developing for their platform to get an idea what to do to add visual search to your site.
- Google Images – More traffic is for Google Images than for text-based searches. Because of this, it gives you an opportunity to optimize your images before uploading them to Google Search. When someone finds your image and clicks on it, you can set it up so that it goes to your blog post and not just to the image.
- Google Lens – This is a visual search engine that enables you to get information or act on your photos images, and anything visual around you. Photos can be of the product, barcodes, business cards, books, and more.
- Yahoo – Upload your images to Yahoo Images as well so that they’ll have mapped your images and site for visual search too. Remember when you upload them to follow all the prompts, so you include all relevant information.
- Bing – You can upload your images with information and descriptions attached to get the most traffic from the images you upload to Bing.
- Pinterest – Upload your visually-rich content and images to Pinterest. Use the sizes and shapes recommended and include those images on your website for the product, too – not just for Pinterest. Also, claim your website on Pinterest so you can have rich pins and be able to track the analytics of traffic and the most popular pins. This can help you understand what it means to add visual search to your site in terms of traffic and conversions.
- Instagram – When you include your high-quality content and images on Instagram, it’s important to make the images the size and quality that is called for on that platform. Use the right size, the right keywords, and other information about the images to get the most mileage.
- TinEye.com – This is a reverse image search site. One thing that a lot of smart marketers figured out a long time ago is that anytime you can include an image with the right keywords and metadata, you can create another avenue to make it to your site. When people search the image and related images show up, it’s because of the added metadata from the site.
There are many other sites popping up that not only offer you another way to make your images findable but also that help customers use their images to find you. When you add visual search to your site and implement the changes you will see a rise in traffic over time.
Tricks and Tips to Ensure You’re Ready for Visual Search as a Small Business Owner
Visual search works just like other types of search in that the idea is the search engine will send the customer who is looking for something to the site that the search engine most believes is hosting the right content. You can make this work better by optimizing your site in the following ways.
- Add Multiple High-Resolution Images for Every Product – Using high-resolution sites does take up more space, but you can compress them using compression software to ensure they work right.
- Add High-Resolution Images for Every Menu Item – Include an image for every menu item too. This is a great way to ensure that someone looking for the items mentioned in your menu finds them.
- Add Images to Your Google Business Listing – When you fill out your Google Business Listing, be sure to add some of your best images. Describe the images well and then add the URL to the image. That way when people search for your type of product locally, you are more likely to show up.
- Pay for More Unique and Professional Images – If you’re not a photographer, it’s tempting to use mostly stock photos, but the truth is that they’re overused. Find a student photographer who is willing to give you a good deal, or learn to take your own professional images. Most iPhones take great images and you can buy a great tripod and photo box to improve your pictures.
- Study Your Analytics – Using your analytics, you can find out what images are being discovered and how that’s affecting your search results and search rankings. You can tell in the analytics what keywords drove people to the site and it will help you improve your listings.
- Use WebP Image Format – Instead of using JPEG and PNG images, you can use WebP image format. This can reduce the file size but not take away from the loading time or the quality of the image.
- Name the Image Files Using the Right Keywords – Don’t just give the image file a one-word name. Give it more information using the right keywords to help the image and your site or products be found.
- Add Schema Markup Syntax to Each Featured Image — This structured data language uses special vocabulary to give information to the search engines, so they understand how to present the information to the user better. You can find out more about using the site Schema.org.
- Compress Images before Uploading to a Web Page – Using an image compressor, take the time to compress images before uploading them so they don’t take up so much room and take so long for your users to load.
- Add Author Information to Posts – While this technology has nothing to do with images, understand that your site visitor sees more than just the images. Including author information on posts, images, and other content boosts credibility and trust.
- Add Share Links – Use a plugin on your website that enables your site visitors to share your images to social media platforms. This leads to more visitors and more opportunities to be found in visual search. When you add visual search to your site, it brings more traffic.
- Ensure Your Host Is Top-Notch – If you use a cheap web host or one that plays fast and loose with the rules, it will affect the delivery of your information in email and search. Make sure they have a great uptime record and you are protected from malware. Also, determine how much storage space you have so you don’t overload the server and slow your site with all the pictures.
- Add All Your Images to TinEye.com – This is a great place to upload your images and information so that more people can find your site and products. Remember to use keywords.
- Learn about SEO – The more you can learn about search engine optimization, the better, so that you can incorporate it and get more eyes on your site and your images.
Visual search really is just one more way to ensure that your customers find you when they conduct a search. Even if you don’t sell physical products, incorporating visual search techniques into your design can only improve everything.
What to Do Right Now
This visual search overview has provided many ideas about where visuals search is going. However, it’s time to start implementing some changes in your business, regardless of whether you have a physical product business or a digital product business. Start with the basic SEO principles, and you can’t go wrong.
The truth is, SEO always included checks to ensure that images were optimized, for several reasons that had nothing to do with search at the time. Instead, it had to do with everyone being able to have access to the site. If someone comes to your site who cannot see and is using a site reader, they cannot see your images at all unless you’ve used all the SEO knowledge included here, such as:
- Name the image file differently using keywords
- Add image information in the code using keywords
- Store the image on your own site and host in files that use keywords
- Use keywords in the description by front-loading the keywords
- Add high-quality images that help explain the products or words
- Use more product images instead of fewer
- Make special images for each platform they’ll be marketed to
- Create a landing page for each of your products
- Use more than just photos and be creative with images
- Consider changing your image type to WebP for compression
- Use snippets
- Make sure your site loads fast
These are all just basic common-sense ideas for improving your search engine optimization, except that it’s focused on increasing the visuals you use on your site and focusing the SEO on those things. However, even if you don’t sell physical products, this is generally an excellent way to get more traffic, boost sales, and draw in more of your ideal audience using visual search and visual search engine optimizations.
Don’t stop here because you will continue to need to add visual search components to your website as you add more products. Make these tips part of your checklist for adding a new product and you can ensure that you are always doing the best you can to optimize your site.
We have a 7-day email training that will walk you through the steps to improve your visual search marketing on your website so you can make more sales. Go to www.wildcatbrandmanagement.com/visualsearch to sign up.
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