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The internet is a visual place. Just take a look at Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, or TikTok – four of the most popular social media platforms on the internet! Photos and videos are integral to all these networks.
They have become so important that Google has even changed their algorithm to rank images higher in search engines because they understand how much people enjoy visual content.
In this case, every savvy marketer understands that they need to make sure that they hop on the bandwagon and start adding more visuals into their marketing strategy. That way. they can gain more online presence and stay ahead of the game.
Not convinced yet? Here’s how visual content can boost your SEO efforts.
#1. Visual Content Keeps Visitors Stay Longer
Visual content such as short video marketing, GIFs, infographics, etc., makes the content more snackable and adds more value to the piece. This way, it is much easier for the visitor to consume the content and understand what is being communicated.
They can end up watching videos or scan through the images that you provided. It means you engage them better (compared to using plain text blog posts) and convince them to stay longer on a page.
The more they stay on your website, the less the bounce rate you will get. And an increased time-on-page and a lower bounce rate mean better SEO rankings.
#2. Google Loves Visual Content
It’s not only people that prefer visual content. The biggest search engine worldwide loves them too. A website with video content is 53 times more likely to appear at the top of Google SERPs.
The reason? That’s because Google sees visual or multimedia content as unique ones — compared to text-based content — and therefore it gives them more weight.
Similarly, the keyword phrases that you use in your images can help Google understand what a page is about, which means better rankings for you. So, if SEO ranks are important to you (and they should be), then don’t forget to add some relevant keywords to the images or videos of your blog posts.
#3. Simplify Complex Ideas
Visual content can break down even complicated topics into smaller chunks, helping the visitor retain the message better. You can create a one-minute video to address a topic that would otherwise need more than one page of text.
According to a study, people tend to remember only 10% of what they read, 20% of what they hear. 30% of what we see. 50% of what we see and hear. Videos combine both visual and audio elements, making it much easier for the viewer to understand the crucial information.
When you give your visitors what they want, your website or page will attract more visitors and entice webmasters to link to your site. In other words, search engines will gain your website authority and higher your SEO ranking.
#4. Generate More High-Quality Backlinks
Visual content is highly shareable. It only takes a few clicks for you to share videos or a picture with your friends. With this high shareability, visual content can also help you generate more backlinks.
At the same time, a picture or a video is a powerful way to link your website’s keywords with other valuable websites and pages on the web. Articles that include video attract at least 300% more inbound links compared to those that don’t.
By making a valuable and informative infographic about your topics of interest, for example, you can promote it through social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter. Thus, other websites will link back to your piece when they find it useful and use it as a reference for their content. Building a strong backlink profile is a sure way to improve your website’s SEO.
Final Thoughts
Other than making the website look even more eye-pleasing, visual content can also be a perfect addition to your SEO strategy. From video games to static images, these engaging types of content can work effectively to improve your rankings. Instead of heavily relying on text-based content, it’s time to create your visuals.
However, you need to remember that you should optimize them in the first place so the crawlers can easily read and index them. This way, your website can enjoy an improved rank and more traffic coming from search engines.
Author
Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video production company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order).
Twitter: @breadnbeyond
Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: Andre Oentoro
