When planning your business website, you might think that content is important and photos are a “nice to have” part of it, but don’t serve much of a purpose beyond looking good. However, good quality photos on your website do so much more than paint a pretty picture.
Effectively used, photos can help drive more visitors to your website, promote social sharing and ultimately help drive business goals such as sales.
While original content, keywords, and meta tags can do wonders to improve your SEO, there is one major, often overlooked factor, that contributes to your website’s rankings: user experience, or how easy or pleasing your website is to use for for your visitors. Clear, crisp photos and helpful videos will boost your website’s overall user experience and as search engine algorithms become more sophisticated, many believe user signals will play a greater role in search rankings.
Here are the top 3 reasons good quality photos are important for your website:
Images and photos help with SEO
Google clearly believes that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” By adding photos with your content to your website, you will be able to illustrate your content and provide helpful visuals about your services or products to your visitors.
However, search engine can’t “see” images - they rely on the image’s file name, captions, alt text, and title texts. You will also need to ensure that your images are the right file size, responsive, and scalable so that your website still loads quickly on any device.
SEO experts have found that, if visitors are given photos to look at, they will remain on a website for a longer period of time. Adding good quality photos improves both your users experience and your ranking by decreasing bounce rate.
Images and photos help to convert leads.
So, as we know websites containing high quality images in addition to their relevant and unique content will get more views than those that are just text based.
Basically, high quality photography supplies you with more visits by increasing the quality of your user engagement. Therefore users are more likely to spend more time on your website meaning you have a longer period to sell your products or services through both content and images.
You want your products to look irresistible and they should take centre stage on your website.
Images help you to build trust in your business and will build credibility and recognition for your brand. And don’t forget a set of headshots taken by a professional photographer.
Good quality photos result in more social media visibility.
When you want your business to be seen, social media is a great way to help boost that visibility. So, be sure to have a few social media platforms that you can promote your business website, your services, your products, etc.
High quality photos have the most potential for being shared, liked and commented on by visitors. Therefore, be sure that what you are uploading is of the highest quality as that will help boost your business further on social media platforms.
Conclusion
Where can you get these high-quality, high-resolution photographs? Well, today’s smartphones can take great pictures and if you know how, you might be able to snag web-worthy images of your products with your smartphone or your camera.
However, if photography isn’t your thing, you may want to find a professional photographer who can help you get some great shots. They will have the necessary knowledge of lighting, angles, and colour to make your products look irresistible and to put them centre stage. Plus, they will provide you with edited, digital copies of the images in whatever format you need.
No matter where you get your photos, your first goal should be to provide the best user experience on your website that you can. Photos will absolutely help you do that. With the right photos, original content, and SEO knowledge, you will bring in more leads, boost conversions, and see higher rankings.
