The Download, S2 Ep2: How to use visuals to drive stronger SEO – Getty Images
Look the world is a big place
where beauty takes many forms stories have many sides and truth
finds its way through the camera's lens for more than 25 years we've reflected the world
as it is and captured the beauty of what it can be our three unique brands have one distinct
goal to move the world just take a look on today's download we'll show you how the visuals
you choose can affect how your site ranks share steps you can take to improve your seo results and
give you tips on how to think differently about the images and videos that connect customers to
your content if you have amazing digital content but nobody can find it how can it make an impact
the download presented by getty images starts now so hello and welcome to the download presented by
getty images your insiders look into the world of visual storytelling and what it means for
your marketing and communications i'm jennifer kelly your host customer success manager here
at getty images thank you so much for joining us as always i want to extend a special welcome
to our premium access subscribers whether you're joining us on linkedin live or watching us on
demand we're here each month to help you get the most out of your getty images plan thank you so
much for being a customer and now on to the show when you hear the term search engine optimization
or seo you probably think about keywords and phrases but did you know that images and videos
can play a big part in how your pages are ranked on a search results page here to share some tips
and dispel some myths about visuals and seo is getty images vice president for search engine
optimization matt or such over to you matt thanks jennifer and welcome everyone to our discussion
today on how to use visuals to drive stronger seo let me start by sharing my screen if you're new
to digital marketing best practices for organic search or even a novice i'm sure you'll find the
material in this presentation helpful to improving your use of imagery if you're looking to grow
your seo opportunities for audience generation when you think of getting images as a brand
you may not immediately think of search engine optimization as a topic we'd cover but that's why
i'm here leading the conversation and guiding us through this incredibly interesting and sometimes
complicated area of digital marketing so let's get to know each other a little better first i've been
at getty images for just about three years now and working as an seo specialist for more
than 20 years across multiple industries and lines of business i'm an industry speaker at
digital marketing conferences and online events and have worked on all types of businesses from
small brick and mortar to large enterprise sites both internally at large brands and on the
agency side if there's one thing i've learned about seo that i love to share it's that
it's constantly changing evolving and influx let's talk about our agenda for today we'll
briefly cover understanding the basics of seo so we're on the same page then address the myth
of stock imagery in our industry the truths about imagery and seo and several tips for optimizing
your imagery for seo and how to choose the right imagery seo or search engine optimization is the
process of improving the rankings of your website its content your app your products or business
listings in search engines like google bing and yahoo the end goal of seo is improving your core
business kpis whether it's visitors leads sales or revenue generation gone are the days of
google presenting just 10 blue links of text as a search result now search engines have
several different kinds of modules and features like website listings knowledge panels and
more which we'll cover in just a moment over the years we've heard that there are more
than 200 different ranking factors for search engines in my 20 years in seo we've heard about
confirmed and unconfirmed algorithm updates and changes but we have been given only about 10
or 20 specific definitive directions to follow the rest we try to reverse engineer and do what's
best for the user optimizing imagery has become increasingly important in the last few years
and its prominence has grown in search results many search engine features and modules now
contain or even require imagery in order for you to rank in them let's explore
some of these opportunities further let's talk about one of those things first that is
a myth in our industry that i wanted to spell and get out of the way the myth is that stock photos
and imagery are not good for seo we need original imagery to rank our content sorry but it's
just not true the facts are quite the opposite being an seo for more than 20 years
i've seen a lot of search results and across every vertical and industry
stock imagery is used around the world every day and works very well to represent the
content it is paired with for organic search content with imagery in fact has more
options and traffic generation opportunity than that without it i know from the amount of
our own imagery that i see in search results today used by our customers and the featured modules
containing those images that it just isn't true imagery has become more valuable over the years
in seo do the changing landscape of what types of media search engines are surfacing from websites
they rank in results google's 10 blue links of text as a search result have morphed greatly
over the last few years many search engines now surface the imagery of a piece of a content for
their web results these can come from web pages articles blog posts infographics hero images
product listings and videos like i said before more than 50 percent of searches have an image
or group of images in the results in google as of may 2022 and this number has grown by more
than three times in just the last couple of years imagery has become more valuable over the years
in seo due to the changing landscape of what types of media come up in search results today's
world of processing power and connectivity speeds have increased and the additional bandwidth comes
with more media opportunities like heavier items like high quality images and 4k video we all know
there's more engagement with content that has imagery as well but beyond that it's a required
element of many of the features in organic search in order to get ranked let's discuss three search
features that require imagery first google news it's usually given top billing and organic results
and image is a required item for google news it is almost impossible to rank in the top five
stories of any keyword search with significant monthly search volume without an image second
google discover is the newest way to have articles blogs sites and news brought to an interest-based
feed on your mobile android or apple device google's requirements clearly state include
compelling high quality images in your content especially large images that have more likely
generation for discover visits the difference between the two though google news is a feature
within google search results and the user needs to search for a topic on google for it to show up
whereas google discover is on your mobile device and is a curation of stories blog posts articles
web pages and more which are selected from around the web of recently published content specific
to the personalization google knows about you for me i see content on digital marketing seo
imagery and photography star wars and baseball and it rotates constantly throughout the day
images are required for both of these systems lastly image pack results now visible in
search results more than 50 percent of the time search engines surface between 10 and 20
images in a collection from its search engine system on web results driven by many
factors that we're going to cover right now let's talk about five tips for
choosing seo friendly imagery and how to optimize them unique images have
the advantage of being specific to your brand perhaps aligning to your color palette imagery
style and audience demographics when it comes to seo having imagery that helps customers identify
your brand the content that you're creating and its goals should be your first selection criteria
use a high quality or high resolution image one that is at least 1200 pixels wide and
an aspect ratio of 16 by nine four by three or one by one these are all recommended
elements provided by google's documentation our asset title and description help
you with ideas on how to save the asset to your website with a valuable file name and
caption again both requirements by google systems the same general best practices apply
to video and optimizing your youtube your content the words you say within
your video and the title and description all contribute to the optimization of the
video to show in results for your audience youtube automatically creates a transcript of
what you say not just for closed captioning not or available text for accessibility screen readers
is also a must for seo finally use structured data in the code of the page a technical representation
of the imagery's metadata like date created location shot the file name if it's in part or
another item like a product or recipe for videos the length of the video and any other key moments
are also valuable in this area that's about it and with that i'll wrap it up i want to thank you for
spending time with us today getty images to review how to use visuals to drive stronger seo have a
great day and i'll turn it back over to jennifer thanks matt a lot of great information
there we'll be back to show you how matt's tips apply to your search for visual
content on gettyimages.com right after this our amazing visual content is just one
thing that makes getty images unique another is access to visual experts and some
of the industry's top talent whether here on the download from our blog or through our
visual gps and creative insights presentations there's just a wealth of well-researched valuable
content that's easily accessible and available on demand with that in mind here to share some
tips tricks and examples of gettyimages.com seo friendly content please welcome to the show
senior research editor chris perez in niges hi chris welcome hey jennifer thank you so much my
name is chris perez aniges senior research editor on the getty north american research team i'm here
to give you a quick five-minute tour of the site and show you how to find some great seo content
now the spot that we just saw touched on this fast emerging force of tech innovation within
the wellness space our creative insights team has done some extensive research and analysis
on this topic as well as many other topics such as finance travel sustainability
and dei or diversity equity and inclusion which has enabled the creation of some powerful
forward-thinking new content which you can access on our site starting on the main page underneath
browse and within the creative insights link and up at the top under the tab trends which lands us on this page here now scrolling
down let's look into this article that explores technology and wellness in more detail called
patient empowerment and video storytelling these articles are a major resource for current
social and cultural data as well as forgetty's own proprietary data that tells us what type
of content is trending among our customers all of which ultimately drives and
powers the content that we offer to you additionally these articles are great places
to start a search as they often contain links to related content at the bottom here are
some sample images related to tech and wellness right above that is a link to a board of assets
curated by our in-house creatives called e-health europe videos clicking into this link into
a new tab brings us directly to the board so here we have a 99 clip sampler of
recommendations from our getty visual experts clicking into this one at the top into a
new tab opens up what's called the asset details page or the adp now in terms of
choosing seo friendly imagery you can make sure that you're choosing authentic high quality
and relevant imagery by simply noting contributors that you're drawn to via the link in the credit
line here on the right side underneath details this one is by visual space click into that
link into a new tab opens up the portfolio on the left here under the filters panel you can
see that their name has been applied as a filter and now you can search their portfolio as normal
let's type in a couple of keywords to start technology and exercise click enter
and as you can see searching specific contributors is a great way to ensure
a consistent and high quality aesthetic another tip to support seo is to make sure
that you're choosing high resolution and large images as matt had mentioned which
you can specify here on the right column underneath purchase a license and
finally taking note of all the text within the adp surrounding the asset
including the title up here at the top the description right underneath and my favorite
resource the keyboard cloud at the bottom all can serve as the ideal reference for you to go title
caption and name your own files for your projects i highly recommend using the keyword cloud to
support your search because it contains all the keywords associated with the clips that you're
drawn to in language which may not be as intuitive for example this clip alone contains the key words
body conscious real people west asian ethnicity even arabic style and non-us film location among
many others simply click into a word to perform a quick search or take note of the keywords that you
want to use and combine them with other keywords in your search bar back to our main search
page making sure that we're searching within creative video i want to type in a couple
of those keywords starting with real people healthy lifestyle technology and let's add non-us film location click enter and already we have nine and a half
thousand images to choose from and to refine from so use this keyword cloud to your advantage as
well as the other clues within the adp to find the highest quality content that meets your
seo expectations and that's five good luck to you on your seo journey back to you jennifer
thank you chris so many great tips there the keyword cloud is one of my favorites as well
everyone else will be right back after this well we've come to the end of today's
show i wanted to take a second to thank chris and matt again for their expert search
tips and seo tips thank you both for joining us don't forget to check out all of our past episodes
including premium access live over on the getty images events page and watch them anytime on
demand if you have any questions about premium access in general visit gettyimages.com or
contact your getty images representative we'll be happy to connect with you we'll
be back next month with premium access live so please let us know if there are
any topics that you would like us to cover by emailing us at the download
gettyimages.com thanks again for joining us today i've been your host jennifer
kelly we'll see you next time on the download
