The massive success of Pinterest and Instagram proves that the web is becoming ever more visual in nature. Already, search engines like Google Images are prioritizing PNGs and JPGs over mere keywords.
Ultimately, multimedia data will become just as important as text in the overall SEO equation in short order. Mastering visual marketing is something that should be done sooner rather than later. Here are a few tips to get you started.
Optimize for All Platforms
Nothing is more annoying than trying to view an appealing image on a mobile device just to find out that it’s not resizable. You’ll experience this phenomenon on Google+ quite a bit. Failure to optimize images for various platforms is a real showstopper. Optimizing visual content for Google+ as well as other platforms is a must in this day and age if you’re looking for maximum traffic.
Mix Up Your Formats
While a picture is often worth a thousand words, there’s more to visual marketing than merely slapping up a lone image file and letting it stand on its own. The effectiveness of infographics when it comes to selling a product or narrative should demonstrate how important it is to mix up image styles and formats. Try publishing slideshows of images with transition effects to bolster the impact of your visual marketing.
Add Text for SEO
Believe it or not, search engines can actually index text within image files nowadays if they’re Flash-based. As such, there’s no reason to not include descriptive text that follows the normal SEO rules within your visual content. Shoot for niche keywords that don’t feature a lot of competition for the best results. Just ensure that your text jives with the pictures that you’re publishing and you’ll be sure to see results.
Tell a Story Along the Way
If you don’t put any thought into how you arrange or present your images, you can’t be surprised when your visual marketing falls flat. Make your images tell a story instead of acting as mere accompaniment to other content. By doing so, you encourage others to share your content with their own online social circles and increase the chances of locking down a viral hit.
Ditch the Visual Cliches
Nothing ensures failure like relying on visual cliches to send a message. The web is rife with trite visual clutter in the form of hackneyed memes and unimaginative ripoffs. Check out pretty much everyone’s Instagram feed for examples of this trend. Skip the boring, worn-out visual cliches and actually come up with something original that hasn’t been done to death by someone else. In the end, it’s the only way to achieve results with visual marketing.
Eye of the Beholder
How your visual marketing actually affects any given audience depends on a variety of factors. To find that “sweet spot” where your visual marketing really shines, you’ll need to play around with your formula a bit and watch your analytics feedback closely. For better or for worse, visual marketing is likely the future of online promotion. Get on-board with the trend now or get left in the dust.
