Visual content is becoming more and more relevant in the digital landscape. It is not just a matter of aesthetics anymore but a way to engage more audiences. However posting relevant images and videos is not enough to gain higher organic traffic, you will have to optimize them with SEO to get a better ranking and higher reach.
Image and video optimization plays a crucial role in the digital world which is why we are going to learn about it and also why these are important to get better traffic and conversion rates!
Why is Visual Content Important for SEO?
Images, videos, charts, graphics, animations, etc holds a great value when it comes to Search Engine Optimization strategies. Visual content helps to get more traffic than plain text. It’s crucial that we use high quality visual content that has been optimized for SEO so that it can reach to get higher conversion rate as well.
Optimized visual content also helps to reduce bounce rate for the site as it gets relevant and adds value to overall content. With the right kind of images and videos you would be convey more complex and diverse content to your viewers.
How to optimize images for SEO
Here are some tips that will help you optimize images for SEO:-
Compressing Images
It’s very tempting to upload high quality images, but these can slow down the loading time due to its large size. So it is important for image optimization that you compress the images to reduce its size while maintaining its quality.
Utilizing descriptive filenames and alt texts
Search engines not only reads the texts but also the names of the images that you have uploaded. It is important that you rename the file names with relevant keywords and be descriptive about the content of the images. This would help you boost the ranking of the webpage and gain more organic traffic.
Using appropriate file formats
The file format is very crucial, you need to make sure to choose the right format to upload. This can make a difference in the quality and size of the image. For example, JPEG format is best for a image qith vibrant colors while PNG will be appropriate for images with text and transparency. WebP allows you to reduce the size at a higher margin while retaining the original quality. For icons and simple graphics, SVG would be perfect.
Implementing responsive design
If you want your site to be compatible with most of the devices, you will have to look at the responsible designs as well. Make sure the image can adapt to different screen sizes and devices. It will improve the SEO ranking.
Structured data markup for image SEO
Marking the images with structured data ensures that search engines can read the context of the image. This helps with the SEO ranking and your content will pop up in the search results when a relevant keywords has been searched.
How to optimize videos for SEO
Here are some tips that can help you optimize videos for SEO:-
Hosting vs. embedding
With video content, you will have two options for optimization, hosting and embedding. Hosting would mean uploading the video directly on your webpage while with embedding you can use other platforms like YouTube. The major difference between the two will be bandwidth usage, hosting requires more bandwidth than embedding and it can also slow down the loading time.
Optimized page speed
With embedding and non simultaneous loading video, the loading speed won’t affect much and it prevents slower page loading speed.
Creating video thumbnails
Thumbnails are very important as these can act as a gateway to your videos. The thumbnails have to be relevant and visually compelling, you can also customize them to make them ideal for your content. This boosts the overall click through rates.
Writing video titles and descriptions
Just like image titles, you will have to be brief and relevant with the video title and description. This will help with the SEO ranking and boost the organic traffic.
Harnessing video transcripts or captions
This again helps with the higher reach among the audiences as the videos have the right captions or transcripts with relevant keywords and information.
There are several image and video optimization tools such as OptimizePics.com that can help you with optimizing your comtent and improve your SEO ranking.
Conversion Rates; What is this? And why it is important?
Conversion rate simply refers to the viewers that complete a desired action on your site. This is associated with the advertisement on your site, so if the user clicks on the ad, whether to download an app or watch an ad, this means the user has been ‘converted’.
Why are conversion rates important?
Conversion rates are important to determine the success of an ad campaign. This is also used for scaling of an ad campaign. This helps an advertiser and marketers to know the valuable users. Conversion rates are helpful in finding out the targeting audiences and optimization of the campaign performance.
For website owners, the higher conversion rate would mean more ad revenue as the advertisers and marketers would be willing to invest in you.
How to calculate conversion rate?
Conversion rates are calculated by taking the number of viewers who have been engaged in the ad and dividing it to the total number of viewers on your site and then multiplying it by 100 to get the percentage rate.
Conversion rate= {number of viewers who perform an action /total number of viewers of ad}× 100
For example, if the total viewers of the ad are 1000 and 400 of them act on the ad, then the conversion rate would be 4%.
How to improve conversion rate?
The conversion rate is directly proportional to the organic traffic. Higher organic traffic results in higher conversion rate.
Here are some tips to improve conversion rates:-
1. Content optimization
2. Lower loading speed
3. Minimum bounce rates
4. Understanding your niche audiences
5. Improve your credibility and gain your audience’s trust
Conusive Thoughts
Image and video optimization goes hand in hand with higher traffic and conversion rates, this is why it’s important that web page owners put efforts in optimization of their content before uploading on their page.
