I have had changes in me years after years. When I was an elementary student, I was recognised as the very diligent nerd. Almost everyone wanted to learn from me, but I didn’t always have ‘my spot’, sure my teachers took care of me a lot because I was considered ‘special’, at least for the teachers, but not my friends. When I was a junior and senior high school student, I was neither nerd nor jock and nor preps. However, when I was a university student, somehow I became both preppy and nerd at the same time. You know the feeling when you are smart but everyone doesn’t hate you for that, right? Well, I know some still hate the idea of it, but it is not always about the appearance. It is not all about what we see outside. It is more about the inner meaning that defines what appears outside. Being a very smart nerd is one thing, you’ve got your teachers’ attention but not your friends. However, if you are a preppy student, you can be smart, classy and popular at the same time. Thinking about this makes me realise that looks alone won’t matter. The same goes with visual content marketing. Visual content marketing strategy that focuses only on looks is the one that doesn’t work. For that reason, many business owners use SEO services to boost their marketing strategy. You might see brochures or pamphlets but if those have no meaning to the marketing strategy, it won’t help the business at all. If you have a business and want to increase brand awareness, first you need to think of SEO whenever you are planning your business marketing strategy so that your marketing strategy will have a meaning. So, what boosts what? The answer is simple; both of them have meanings and functions for each other. You can improve your business SEO by improving your visual content marketing and by improving your visual content marketing; you can also improve your business SEO. How? Keep reading to find out!
A research says that 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. Visuals are often processed 60,000x faster than text. Also, 65% of humans are fast when it comes to visual learnings because they respond better to visual information than plain text. For that reason, visual content is more relevant in 2019 than ever before. According to a research conducted by LiveStream and New York magazine, 82% of people now prefer videos over regular text-based posts from brands. So, how do you create great visual content?
Your visual content should be 300 words in length
If you are writing for a description of what visual content is about, make sure it has at least 300 words. That number is recommended by Yoast SEO. However, you still have to use keywords but don’t use too many of them. Also, the keywords and your content should be relevant to each other.
Keep file sizes small
While visual content is better than plain text, you still need to consider a few things first. One of them is the file size. High quality image may make your content highly qualified, but if it is oversized, it will still be a hurdle to your marketing strategy. For example, if your website contains oversized images, it will take too long to load your website, which is bad for your website traffic. Therefore, choose the image size wisely before putting that into your website. The best image sizes for every website are various and it depends on how and where the content will be displayed on your website. For example, a header image may need larger dimensions instead of a thumbnail. Dots per inch (known as DPI) might be irrelevant but screens basically will work well with images at 72 or 96 DPI.
Name the file wisely
Believe it or not, Google actually reads image metadata. EXIF data that comes from camera may include an image description and according to Cognitive SEO, image description is used by Google to rank your visual content. File names are also important. The name you are going to choose can be your target keywords that are relevant to the image which makes it easier for Google to find your content.
So, why are we talking about this again? Oh yes, visual content matters to SEO more than you can imagine. I’m not just talking about this article. I for one am more interested in visual content than just plain text. Visual content helps me understand better than just text. Therefore, if you want to boost SEO, make sure your visual content marketing strategy is created with SEO in mind. That way, you can boost both SEO and marketing at the same time to increase your brand awareness and online visibility.