Visuals are the future of search.
Many popular search engines and social platforms including Google, Bing, Pinterest, Amazon, and Snapchat have already taken giant steps to adopt visual search.
And that means businesses too should adapt their brand strategies in favor of visual search.
Why? Because it’s a great way to rank higher and generate more clicks for your website.
Visual search has been around for quite some time. It shot into popularity with the introduction of Google Lens, Pinterest Lens, TinEye, Bing visual search, Snapchat camera search, and many more.
In fact, visual search is so hassle-free that millennials and Gen Z seem to prefer using it over other search types.
According to Data Bridge Market Research, the value of the global visual search market is expected to be nearly $33 billion by 2028.
Image via Data Bridge
Presently, Google Lens is used 3 million times every month globally to learn more about people, places, and things. Users can translate text in real-time and even shop for their favorite looks using visual search tools.
From a digital marketer’s perspective, visual search opens up a whole new world of possibilities. It invites us to think beyond keywords and leverage the power of pictures and videos.
You need to optimize your images and videos before uploading them to websites and social media platforms. For example, you need to resize videos and images to reduce loading time. Optimize media files always load fastly in compensation to heavy media files.
But I must confess, optimizing your brand strategies for visual search can be a bit overwhelming if you are new to it.
In this post, I am sharing a few techniques to create powerful brand strategies for visual search to get you started in the right direction.
Let’s dig in.
Top 6 Ways to Adopt Your Brand Strategies for Visual Search
Images are one of the most effective ways to humanize your brand. Now they are doubling up as SEO tools as more users lean on visual search.
Here are 6 expert-recommended ways to adopt your brand strategies for visual search and get ahead of your competitors.
1. Opt for High-Resolution Images
Image optimization has become crucial for every website as visual search gains dominance. If you want to attract more traffic through visual search, it is imperative that your website contains a lot of images.
One of the fundamental brand strategies for visual search is to invest in clear, easy-to-understand, and high-resolution images. So that when someone conducts a visual search, Google can easily match your photos with that particular search query.
If your product is a digital marketing tool, you need to use clear and high-resolution screenshots of your tool’s features to optimize them for visual search. Image compressional tools can help you optimize your images without compromising the quality.
Blurry images look uninteresting and unprofessional to the users. Whereas high-resolution images will allow your audience to take a closer look at your products. They also engage leads and pique their interest to enter your sales funnel.
2. Adopt Structured Data
Structured data is crucial when you add any kind of content to your website.
When you are developing brand strategies for visual search, you need to focus on providing precise information for search engines.
Structured data is used to emphasize certain parts of the content to help search engines deliver better results. So, if you want your website’s landing pages to appear in top search results or even in Google snippets, focus on adding structured data to your website.
In the same way, one of the best ways to optimize your website design for visual search is to add structured markup for images.
To get started with your brand strategies for visual search, go through Google’s general structured data guidelines. You can even move on to implement site maps to better match your images to search queries.
3. Add Alt Tags
Adding alternative text or alt tags to your images is one of the top brand strategies to optimize them for visual search.
Alt tags are an effective way to provide relevant information about a photo or a product image.
Let’s take the image below as an example to understand a good and a bad alt tag.
A bad alt tag for this image would be – school buses. However, a good alt tag would be – a row of yellow school buses parked in the parking lot.
Image via Pixabay
By adding alt tags to your images, you’re helping your potential buyers understand your offerings better with a quick description.
Not only your leads, but alternative text helps search engines to perceive the context of an image better.
Such brand strategies directly bear an impact on how your images will be matched with the visual search queries and how they will be ranked.
4. Optimize Image Sizes and File Types
Images with larger file sizes may considerably slow down your website and it’s a big digital marketing no-no.
One of the top brand strategies to adapt to visual search is to select the right file size and type to ensure that it doesn’t affect the user-friendliness of your website.
Instagram influencers optimize their images before posting them to their own account and it helps them to get more engagement.
The solution to large image files is simple. Use image compression tools.
Even when you upload high-resolution images, you can use effective image compression tools to reduce their size and still maintain their clarity.
Along with size, what matters is the types of files you use and how compatible they are with your website.
Some of the widely used and Google-preferred image file types are:
- JPEG
- PNG
- BMP
- GIF
- WebP
- SVG
While choosing the image size and file types, don’t forget to optimize them for different devices your audience may use to access them.
5. Optimize Image Titles and Descriptions
When users conduct a visual search, they are basically seeking information, be it about a monument, food, or fashion.
Adding a relevant title and description to your image is one of the top brand strategies to deliver the information your audience is seeking.
Let’s say you have an image of a leather jacket.
Instead of giving this file a generic name like ‘img123.png,’ you can use a more descriptive title like ‘red leather jacket for women.’
Such titles help both the search engine and your audience to understand the images better. They also can play a role in boosting your conversion rate optimization.
The image title and the description should contain keywords and relative terms to ensure that your images are well-optimized for all kinds of searches.
For example, most of the ecommerce platforms provide the visual optimization feature so that their client can optimize their media file while creating ecommerce websites for their online store.
6. Include Captions
You’ll be surprised to know that not all platforms allow you to include image descriptions.
That’s why one of the best brand strategies to optimize for visual search is to include captions in your images.
Given that not all images are self-explanatory, it can be confusing for users who are searching for specific information.
By adding captions, you can help them understand the context of the image. It empowers them to make the right purchase that meets their needs. When customers are happy with their purchase, it ultimately increases customer lifetime value.
Use crisp captions with the right keywords to better engage your audience.
Are You Ready to Create Effective Brand Strategies for Visual Search?
Going forward, your SEO strategies should focus on delivering the most relevant information to your audience. It helps attract more clicks and boosts your rankings.
Creating targeted brand strategies for visual search can help you achieve both SEO goals.
Without any delay, go ahead and adopt the techniques discussed above to make your website fully optimized for visual search. Be future-ready.
