Marketing 101: Optimizing Images for Local SEO

HomeBlogLocal SearchMarketing 101: Optimizing Images for Local SEO

Local Search Marketing 25 Feb 2022 admin

When trying to run a business, there’s no denying that digital marketing makes up a significant portion of your company’s chances of success. Marketing is an all-encompassing factor for most business owners out there — some would go so far as to base most of their efforts on the marketing front alone.

While it might seem strange to put so much stock into marketing, consider what aspect of your company can be regarded as a marketing tactic. For example, your primary website is a reflection of your business online and is likely to be the platform where you sell your products and services. It is also known as the last line of marketing defense, as it’s where you convince online users to finally make a purchase.

With web design, how you manage your images can determine success or failure in the industry marketplace — particularly when optimizing your images for local search engine optimization (SEO).

Why local SEO?

Local SEO is the primary marketing front as there’s little reason to compete with every company in your chosen industry by tackling a wide demographic. In most cases, it’s best to target your local demographic, as it serves to narrow the competition while still being relevant for your business. In the case of web design and image optimization, here are a few tips to help you fully optimize your images for local SEO.

Ensure you compress your images

First and foremost, if you want to optimize your images for your website, ensure that they’re in the proper format and file size before uploading them to your site. Consider that most people are only willing to wait up to fifteen seconds for a page to load fully. If your images are too large, it can cause slow loading times — something that can lead to a high abandonment rate for your business. Fortunately, many programs can help you compress images before going through with the upload.

Keep your images relevant to the local crowd

When it comes to content marketing, one of the most popular tactics involves writing articles and blogs relevant to the local crowd and encouraging them to purchase. You can do the same thing with images, provided you ensure your pictures are relevant to the local crowd. Depending on your products and services, you can have images that appeal to the local crowd. It will be a good idea to get the help of a local SEO marketing agency if you’re looking to brainstorm ideas.

Image file descriptions matter

If you want to ensure that your images get the attention they deserve through search engine optimization, you should customize the file descriptions. Leaving default file descriptions for images is a wasted opportunity, especially if you want Google’s local search engine algorithm to take notice. Instead, give catchy descriptions relevant to your local crowd to ensure it becomes more visible to online image searches.

Keep the mobile industry in mind

Last but certainly not least, optimizing your images means taking into account the most popular platforms of today’s digital world. For example, most people enjoy surfing the web through smartphones, which means you’ll have to optimize your website for mobile. If your images aren’t mobile-friendly, chances are you’ll frustrate your mobile crowd. Considering the staggering number of mobile users, it’s no wonder why most companies focus on the mobile version of their website compared to the desktop version.

Optimizing your images for local SEO is all about keeping them relevant while at the same time following the necessary dimensions and file size for mobile phones. Companies that can fully optimize images have a significant advantage over most of their peers.