enewton@brightedge.com

M Posted 10 years 3 months ago

t 9 min read

When people arrive on your site, they will be forming their first impression within 50 milliseconds, which is why image SEO is so important. They will then be deciding whether or not to stay on the site within 8 seconds or less. This amount of time makes it hard to pull in new visitors with text or great offers alone. Research has shown that an estimated 94 percent of first impressions are based upon the design of the website. Customers are drawn or repelled by your web page based upon impression and appearance. 

The importance of image SEO as a part of SEO marketing strategy and other visual content in website success has become even more apparent in recent years. Brands that already use custom visual content see conversion rates that are about 7 times higher than other sites. This makes sense when one considers that for most people, 83 percent of their learning is visual.

By using visual content, brands are able to communicate more effectively with their visitors while also creating a more appealing site that encourages engagement. Visual content will be increasing in the coming years. Those interested in getting onboard with the image seo trend should focus on understanding why images are so important and how they can be included in a successful online strategy.

The Role of Images and Image SEO

The popularity of videos and images is increasing rapidly. By 2019 some analysts predict that videos will comprise 80 percent of all Internet traffic. Customers will be engaging with videos for a number of different purposes. Videos will become an integral part of communicating with customers and inviting them to learn more about the brand. Branded videos can be used to engage and provide value for viewers, urging them closer towards conversion.

Images and videos will become an important part of the storytelling process. They are a means of communicating quickly and efficiently with customers. The average attention span in 2015 was only a little over 8 seconds, and visual content allows brands to distribute valuable information in a format that can be understood within this timeframe. According the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the human brain can process images in as little as 13 milliseconds.

Images, infographics, gifs and similar images are particularly valuable for letting visitors know the basics of what the content is discussing. People who do not want to read an entire article but are still interested in the material can glance at these images and absorb some of the value of the content without losing time. This helps brands engage with visitors who might have otherwise passed by them.

Videos and images can be used throughout a marketing campaign. The incredible popularity of video platforms, including YouTube-- which is the second-most-popular search engine, behind only Google-- means that branded videos can be used to attract video users on social platforms. They can also be used to boost social media campaigns, improve content on the website and they have a home in email campaigns. If your products or services are particularly complex visuals can be used to show a demonstration of how these products are used.

Videos can also be used to introduce the visitor to past customers, members of the company or how the products are created. This type of personal interaction invites the visitor into the company and establishes the personal connection between the brand and the customer. This helps to boost the relationship and draw the customer closer to conversion. Videos can take a lot of effort to produce, so make the most of them by making the video thumbnails appealing and engaging on your site. Here are some recent BrightEdge video testimonials that generate a lot of engagement. Clear and well-lit face images have been shown to perform well for engagement and conversion.

The Use of Images

In response to the increasingly important role of images, companies and their budgets have been responding accordingly. From 2014-2015 the average budget for visual content grew by 3 to 5 percent and it is expected to increase by a similar amount by 2016.

Businesses who have begun to use this type of content have found that certain types of content are more successful than others at engaging customers. For example, professional and commissioned photography, as well as original graphic designs, have been the most effective for many brands. Using custom photography ensures that the images posted are unique to the brand and completely fit with what the content is trying to communicate. Stock photography, on the other hand, comprises of generic images that customers might even be seeing other sites. This removes the personal element and does not tell the customer as much about the company and why they are unique.

Despite the inroads that have been made in the successful usage of images, many businesses are still struggling. The biggest challenge cited by brands has been the lack of time and staff resources to make it happen. More than half, 65.4 percent, say that this is their largest obstacle.

Our own research at BrightEdge has also found that companies are not capitalizing on image seo as much as they could. We measured click-through rates of classic text-based content against visual content on SERPs. We found that for sites that landed in position 1 and 2 on the results pages had higher click-through rates for classic content. Results in position 3-10, however, had higher click-through rates for visual content.

We theorized based on this research that it is likely that images are not doing as good of a job answering queries. We recommend that brands incorporating visual content focus on optimizing their image to ensure that search engines and users can see how it answers their question. Make sure the image has the following criteria:

• it is high-quality
• the description incorporates the image value
• semantic markup is used to maximize the understanding of search engines
• the image sitemap makes it clear how the image fits with the content

At BrightEdge we have increased the focus on visual content and image seo and have seen excellent results in terms of site performance and search rank. Here are our popular infographics.

The Knowledge-Based Trust infographics ranks first in Google images and helps drive traffic to the blog post.

Psychology of imagery

Understanding why images are so successful can be an enormous asset for brands interested in incorporating visual content in the coming year. Once you understand what visitors are getting out of the images, it can help you capitalize on their preferences and maximize the use of visuals.

You want to use images and videos that make people stop and look. The more exciting and engaging the visual content is, the more interested people generally are in sharing the content. People want to share content that makes them look good. Content that helps them to increase their own reputation in the eyes of their connections is particularly valuable and increases the odds of the content being shared.

When on social media, the power of images to create shareable content is easy to see. For example, tweets with images are responded to and retweeted 2x as much as those without. Images make the post more appealing, easy to digest and therefore a more ideal post to share with others.

This field of logos BrightEdge Share15 attendees captures attention and communicates powerfully.

Images also allow brands to demonstrate their value on a far deeper level. Most customers do not like to buy something that they have never seen. They would also prefer to have the opportunity to touch, feel and otherwise experience the product. Although this is impossible to do online, images and videos create the closest experience to an optimum scenario. Videos allow customers to see the product being demonstrated and watch it perform. They can see images of other people using the product or service and can read their faces for signs of enjoyment and appreciation.

Customers also like to buy based upon emotion. Although customers like to believe that their purchases are based upon factual, objective decisions, the role of emotions has proven time and again. Images can be used to help convey the desired feelings. You can use images to show happiness, comfort, friendship and other positive attributes that help to entice people to learn more.

These images also communicate evidence that others are using your product. People like to know that the products they are considering purchasing have been used successfully by others. The bandwagon effect-- the propensity of people to be interested in products that others in their social circle have used-- can easily be propagated by images showing past customers enjoying a product.

Using images to give users a ‘behind-the-scenes’ look at your company can also be immensely valuable. By letting people see the brand leaders, hear salespeople speak and even receive a tour of your office or factory, you can help people feel connected to the brand. Rather than doing business with a faceless business, visitors will see you as an individual with whom they can connect. This also helps to create the feeling of transparency for the brand, which makes it easier for customers to trust your company.

The BrightEdge platform is the only one that reports on universal or blended and classic results, and that helps you optimize and compete for those prominent positions. 

You will rarely find a marketing professional who neglects the power of images-- but there are many who will fail to recognize the full potential of these visual aids. Pictures are usually relegated to boosting text content. They are used to build engagement with readers or to attract more clicks on social media. Image-oriented searches on Google, however, can open an entirely new door for marketers when it comes to attracting more traffic and potential customers. Research has indicated that 63 percent of the clicks made on images will turn into site traffic. There are a number of searches made every day that are geared towards finding visual results, such as those that focus on housing design or clothing. When you type “House Design” into Google, right below the sponsored ads will be a series of image results that immediately draw the eye and address the question for most people.

Thinking more strategically about image SEO and optimizing your images so they can be displayed prominently in these types of searches can help direct relevant traffic towards your website.

Value of image SEO

There is some debate surrounding the value of an image search. Many people making image queries are interested in ideas or the pictures themselves, they are not necessarily driven to make a purchase. For your images to show up in such search you need to do image SEO. There are numerous industries, however, that are built around images, such as stock photo companies or those who design site templates. Others will use images to display their skills or expertise, such as designers or photographers.

It is also important to recognize that even industries that are not directly related to images can still find value in ranking well for visuals. Increasing the traffic that goes towards your website will help to boost brand awareness and recognition. The value of this might not be immediately recognizable, but can play an important role when it comes time for people to purchase services later.

Providing users with quality, engaging images on your site can also increase the interested traffic to your site-- traffic with people who will stop, interact with your page and explore a little. When you increase your rates of engaged traffic, you can raise the ranking of your site. This will then help you rank higher for queries more directly related to your products and services.

Optimizing images for image search

To take advantage of the value offered by high-ranking images, it is important to follow a few rules for optimization.

• Make sure the aesthetic value does not change, but that the image SEO is in place and the image loads as quickly as possible. Google wants to see high-quality images, but they know that visuals that take a long time to load will not please customers.
• Use unique, relevant images. Google does not want multiple copies of the same picture, so using stock images will not result in image rankings. Use images that are clearly related to the text so that Google will be able to link it to a particular context.
• Take advantage of all the ways available to label the image. This means using the alt attributes, title tags and image names. This will make it as easy as possible for Google to understand which queries the image answers.
• Use schema markups to emphasize images. Schema ensures that the search engines recognize the image and that they will display it when opportunities for rich snippets present themselves.

Measuring the impact of image SEO

Google Webmaster Tools will provide you with some useful monitoring systems that you can use to start tracking your progress with image SEO optimization. Once you log into the webmaster tools, you will want to click on Search Analytics under Search Traffic.  

Then, on the screen that appears, go over to search type. Instead of selecting Web, click on Image. This will then give you insight into the types of queries and the number of clicks you are getting specifically for image-related searches. You can also adjust your data to look at the number of impressions or the positions of your website. Use these insights to monitor your progress as you implement the best practices for images.

The web is becoming more visual with each passing year. For brands to keep up, they need think more about image SEO and make sure that the images they post on their websites have been optimized to attract audiences searching for pictures. Following these guidelines, while tracking progress through Google, can help you see the value the images are adding to your website and the traffic they are attracting.

5 Ways to Utilize Image SEO to Convert Customers at Various Stages of the Buying Cycle

Once you understand how important images are to the success of your marketing campaigns and SEO management efforts, you will then want to find ways to incorporate them into your own efforts.

1. Use welcoming images on the website to entice visitors to explore the site and introduce them to your brand. This will encourage the early foundation of the relationship with personal faces and a sense of transparency in the company.
2. Encourage customers to post images on social media and include some of their own shots to show the product in action to your brand followers. This will help you tap into the bandwagon effect.
3. Post videos on YouTube and SlideShare and other popular third-party platforms to spread the brand message. Remember that on these third party platforms, the focus will need to be on providing value-- product videos or videos that require background information about the brand will struggle to find an audience.
4. Use images and videos in email newsletters to keep people engaged and provide them with easy-to-digest information that they can view quickly.
5. Create product page images and videos to explain what sets you apart and walk people through the buying process. Imagine your videos are the opportunity to give your visitors a personal product demonstration.

Visual content is quickly beginning to dominate the digital ecosystem. Brands need to understand the role these images and videos should play in their online marketing efforts and why they are effective. This can help you maximize your efforts in 2016.

A BrightEdger

M Posted 10 years 4 months ago

t 9 min read

Conveying trust and authenticity to your audience is a key component in gaining competitive advantage. An estimated 80 percent of customers say that authenticity is critical when they determine whether or not they want to follow a particular brand. Influencer marketing can be an important building block in conveying both of these messages to your intended audience. It allows you to tap into the power of an industry authority whose opinion the audience values. Influencer marketing, as the chart below shows, is dramatically on the rise. Last month the Wall Street Journal reported how Forbes is changing its business model to invite advertiser’s advertisers to pay for access to influencers across networks of journalists, academics and bloggers. This is a clear sign that influence has monetary value.

What is an influencer

An influencer is a person who is respected as an authority in their subject area. People listen to what they have to say and take their recommendations and suggestions seriously. They are regarded as informed and viewed as a leader within their industry. Source - http://traackr.com/faces-of-influence

Influencers will also have a sizeable audience of people who follow them to learn and participate in conversations. This audience often engages on social media, where sites such as LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter have offered people the platforms they need to build a personal brand with thousands of followers. For influencer marketing to be effective for you, it is important to focus on finding one who has an audience that overlaps with your own target consumer. When you are able to successfully engage with your influencer, they will be spreading the message about your brand to others who are the most likely to be interested in what you have to offer. It is important to go through a careful vetting process when finding the right influencer for your brand. Although technology can help spit out results, telling you which people have high numbers of followers, it is only by looking carefully at their content that you can gauge their authenticity and trustworthiness.

How influencer marketing can help you

There are a number of different ways that influencers can help you spread your brand. Small actions, such as liking or sharing a post, can help lend some credibility to what you have to say. When a person with thousands of followers acknowledges your content, that can help get your material in front of countless people as it shows up on their own feeds. You might also consider asking an influencer to mention you or your products and services on their channels. This does not have to be a formal recommendation, but it can be a shout out, an acknowledgement or other means of letting their followers know that you are available to help them with their problem.

Finally, influencers can help you by directly recommending you or providing you with the opportunity to post on their website or blog. With a formal recommendation, the influencer will be throwing their professional authority behind you, which will help to inspire their followers to learn more about you. Those who were debating about whether to use your organization may have the scales tipped towards you. A guest post gives you the platform you need to directly address the influencer’s massive audience. One of the biggest struggles for many companies is attracting people to their blog. They might have fantastic ideas, but with a limited audience, it can be a struggle to get them noticed.

When you produce something for an influencer’s blog, then you have the audience already in place and it is your chance to shine. It is estimated that influencer behavior can produce 16 times the engagement rates of alternative marketing tactics, such as paid media. A study that looked at the impact of influencer marketing across a variety of industries found that brands saw an average earned market value (EMV) of $6.85 for every dollar they spent. The stronger the endorsement you can receive from the influencer, the more their potential impact can be magnified to persuade people to do business with your organization.

Putting influencer marketing to use

1. Find relevant influencers who have an audience that aligns with yours. Use technology and research to learn about the influencers in your industry. Identify a few key players and examine them carefully to learn about their audience and how closely it matches your ideal buyer personas. Vet their quality and authenticity to make sure it will be a good match.

2. Build a relationship with them. Once you know who would be a good fit for your campaign, you then need to focus on the relationship. No one wants to do favors for someone they just met, and being too forward, without establishing the bond first, can end up hurting your reputation. This relationship can be built by following them, sharing their content, commenting on their material and otherwise engaging them online.

3. Show value to your targeted influencers. As you build your relationship, you also need to reflect on your ability to provide value for the influencer. For example, if you are adding a new product or service to your industry space, an influencer who recommends you early on to their audience can be credited with ‘discovering’ this incredible value. Even just providing content that regularly adds tremendous value for the audience can offer something for the influencer.

4. Reach out and ask for more direct engagement. Once you have laid the foundation for a strong relationship with an influencer and they have been receptive to what you offer, you will then be in a better position to reach out and seek more direct engagement. You might ask for an endorsement or space as a guest poster, for example.

Influencer marketing is all about leveraging the human element in marketing - tapping into the power of the recommendation and what people are willing to trust online. In a world where people have seemingly limitless options when it comes to the businesses they can buy from and the resources they can learn from, communicating trust and authenticity are key. Influencer marketing gives you the power to tap into this potential. You can read more detail about the power of influence in this post by Andy Betts on the BrightEdge blog which take marketers through 9 steps to influence.    

Robert Lim

M Posted 10 years 4 months ago

t 9 min read

Domain authority and Trust Flow both measure the influence of a website as primarily measured by the number and quality of the site that link to it. When Google determines how well a particular page on your site ranks for a query, the algorithm is not only looking at the individual page that has been optimized for that keyword or phrase - it is also looking at the reputation of the entire website. That is why a site like SearchEngineWatch can publish a new post, and it will quickly rank highly on queries. Meanwhile, your new blog that you started a few weeks ago might post a fantastic, insightful article but you cannot find your site until page three or four of the search results.

Established, reputable sites, like BrightEdge and SearchEngineWatch have a strong domain authority. These domains, which Google has already established as trustworthy, are regularly scanned by spiders to check for fresh content like this post. The strong reputation helps to boost the new web page, even before it has time to cultivate much traffic, many backlinks or other known factors in Google’s algorithm. While much of SEO focuses on optimizing specific pages of content to perform well in the search engines, it is important not to neglect domain authority. As your overall site reputation improves, it will help to boost every page on your domain. Here are four steps you can take to start improving your domain authority or trust flow today.

Cultivating good backlinks

Your backlink profile is an important means of demonstrating your domain authority to Google. When one site links to another, in many ways they are putting their own reputation behind the second site. The site is saying that this source is reliable and trustworthy for their visitors. Websites, therefore, that cultivate many links from a variety of other reputable sites can be regarded as equally authoritative sites. As Matt Cutts from Google has said: backlinks are a really, really big win in terms of quality for search results - backlink relevance still really, really helps in making sure we return the best, most-relevant, most-topical set of search results On the other hand, sites that receive multiple backlinks from poor sites, such as spam links, may be seen as untrustworthy.

Although Google does not say that sites can be harmed in their rankings from bad backlinks, the possibility of this threat remains. It is best to use Google’s disavow tool whenever needed. This tool will let Google know that you do not want to have anything to do with the poor links, which will help ensure that you do not receive any negative ramifications. Building a strong backlink profile can be a challenge. The most important thing you can focus on is producing high-value content that is engaging and people like to read. Then promote this content as often as possible, across social media and other distribution methods. You can also seek opportunities for guest posts to demonstrate your thought leadership. The more people who read and value your content, the more they will be willing and eager to provide you with backlinks from their own material.

Build internal links

Many sites neglect the importance of internal links. Linking from one page of content to other, relevant pages can help customers move around your site and understand your navigation and organization. Not only do these links help human visitors explore, they can also help the spiders crawl that arrive from Google and the other major search engines. This improves your reputation, resulting in stronger overall domain authority. These links can also encourage readers to remain on your site as they examine what you have to offer about their topic of interest. The more time people spend on the page, the higher your engagement statistics will be for the search algorithm, improving your reputation and rankings.

Reexamine technical SEO

There are also a number of other technical SEO methods that you should employ to boost your domain authority. It is important to go through your site and make sure that you are completely updated in the following areas:

• Set up easy site navigation with the sitemaps uploaded and an organized, understandable domain
• Use meta tags and meta descriptions to make it as easy as possible for Google and users to know when your site is relevant
• Use alt tags for your images so that the search engines know what your visuals show
• Make sure that the pages of the domain have been optimized with the appropriate keywords that reflect consumer vocabulary and queries so that it appears in the appropriate queries
• Minimize the load time - Google and visitors do not like it when a site takes more than a few seconds to load

Build brand trust

As you work to build your brand trust, you will also increase your domain authority. Brand trust is something that will need to be cultivated across the web. To build brand trust, you need to begin, once again, with your content. Content that adds value and answers the needs of your customers will be content that is trusted. You should be researching topics and keywords that your intended audience is most interested in reading. The BrightEdge Data Cube can be an excellent resource to guide you in this area.

You will then need to develop content that addresses the needs of these consumers. The content should provide immediate value and go in depth with the topic - a cursory exploration or a reposting of what every other website already articulates will do little for your content exposure or your visitors. This content will be promoted on social media. On these platforms you want to cultivate a strong following with outstanding content and an interactive style. Ask questions of your followers, address their inquiries, entertain them with contests and reward them with occasional coupons or other bonuses. The BrightEdge platform provides detailed backlink count and Trust Flow information over time.

BrightEdge also displays the quality and Trust Flow of a site's backlinks. The BrightEdge SEO platform also breaks down the content types in which the backlinks exist. BrightEdge will also help a site identify the gap backlinks a competing site has that your site does not. You can also build brand trust by tapping into the influencers in your industry. Influencers are people that your customers already rely on for accurate information and advice.

When you build relationships with these influencers and they vouch for you by sharing your content or allowing you space as a guest poster, they are throwing the strength of their reputation behind you. This can boost people’s trust of your brand as well. Your domain authority can have a powerful impact on how your pages rank and therefore the traffic you receive. Taking the time to follow these steps and boost your reputation can influence the ranking of every page on your site now and in the future.

spatel

M Posted 10 years 4 months ago

t 9 min read

BrightEdge’s 6th annual digital marketing conference, Share16, is coming this October 24-26th at the Westin St. Francis in the heart of San Francisco! Last year we had 75+ of the best speakers from leading brands like Google, Salesforce, Microsoft and Bing. This year we plan on making Share16 even better. We have already started receiving requests to speak at Share16 and so we are opening submissions early. If you want to submit yourself or someone you know as a potential speaker, or have a great idea for a session you want us to consider, please let us know.  

If you have an interesting success story to share, practical insights or performance-related case studies then we want to hear from you! To submit a speaking proposal or nominate a speaker, please fill out the speaking submission form. We will be collecting submissions until April 15 with all potential speakers notified by April 29, because of the high expected number of submissions not all speakers will be selected. Learn more about sponsoring, attending, or speaking at brightedge.com/share16. Check out the videos of all Share15 speakers and their presentations by choosing “Share15" under category: Share15 Search, Content, and Digital Marketing Presentations Recap!