Image Optimization Potential for Better Search Engine Rankings

Stock photography has been often questioned whether it can have a negative impact on a website’s search ranking. A couple of years ago however, Google has stated that stock photos will not affect a website’s reputation from the SEO perspective.

Stock Imagery

While this is true, there are a couple of caveats to this. Firstly, keep in mind that stock photos are generic by their nature which will result in a bland visual for your website, especially if you use a lot of them. Users are already familiar with stock photos and are able to spot them. As a result this type of images will fail to capture the user’s attention.

Secondly, stock photos are available to everyone on the internet; hence the chance of multiple websites using the same images is very high. In this aspect, Google is not so forgiving and will avoid ranking multiple copies of the same image in their algorithm.

As an example, when you work on your company’s “About Us” page you can either pick a stock image of a random people in an office or you can post an actual photo from your office. The second alternative confers a more welcoming and personal atmosphere to your webpage.

The quality of content is just as important in images as it is in text. While there is no definite confirmation whether search engines will use images used as a quality signal, it is worth at least considering the impression on the website visitors.

Image Engagement

Above everything, search engines will value content with the higher user engagement. Having visual content of a high quality, relevant and unique will translate into a higher chance being picked up by search results. As with any type of content, the popularity of your content can help it reach higher on the search results pages.

The principles of link-building also apply to image search: the more people link to your image, the higher the chances of increased search traffic coming from it. This can also be facilitated by the use of sharing buttons alongside your images. Once your image gets shared on many sites, its popularity will contribute to its ranking in search.

Images will gain in reputation when it is clicked on your website, is shared to other pages and on social media platforms. This indicates how relevant and popular the image is. As a result, search engines will also pay attention to these images and will want to serve it to their users on relevant search queries.