As web content becomes increasingly rich and dynamic, powerful visual assets to support your content marketing efforts have become a must. However, properly incorporating visual assets in a meaningful way–while also boosting SEO–can be a challenging undertaking, even when your marketing team has the necessary skills and experience.
To help with this challenge, we approached our community of expert marketing professionals to seek their insights on how to best incorporate visual assets into content marketing campaigns while boosting SEO. Many of our respondents also shared pro tips on how to make visual content more impactful and pitfalls to avoid while executing your content marketing plan.
What are visual assets in content marketing?
Visual assets in content marketing include infographics, images and photographs, videos, and social elements such as memes and GIFs. While they are often used alongside written content to supplement the information being presented, visual assets can also serve as stand-alone content when properly optimized through the use of on-page SEO, including optimized title tags and metadata.
Why are visual assets important in content marketing?
The primary goal of leveraging visual content in your content marketing strategy is to enhance the user experience with more engaging content. When a reader can relate to your content they will find a reason to share with others, which in turn helps to enhance SEO performance and boost your brand recognition across social channels.
Here are a few more reasons why visual assets are so essential to a well-rounded content marketing strategy.
Visual assets carry great weight in the eyes of search engines
Through the incorporation of increasingly advanced artificial intelligence (AI) tools, Google and other search engines are able to execute increasingly sophisticated types of searches, and it’s important that your visual assets are configured for that future.
“Bottom line, Google has stated time and time again that visuals matter. Now that AI can better understand images, it’s likely that the actual visual content could be categorized in future versions of Google search, if they aren’t already. For now, it’s best to stick to the tried and true implementation of accepted tactics for boosting image visibility via tags and metadata.” —Carl Holden, Creative Director, Zellus Marketing
Visual assets add context and clarity
Visual assets aren’t just a way to add dynamic content to a page. Visual assets are one of the best ways to add context to your content for your readers to better understand the facts or data being presented, or gain insight into a product or service.
“Visual assets are definitely an important consideration for SEO in content marketing. Textual content should always be accompanied by visuals to get a full understanding of what the copy is about. Graphs and charts help users understand concepts easier. Images and gifs also accompany text to paint a better picture.” —Alexandra Zieniewicz, Senior SEO Strategist, Austin Williams
Visual assets organically improve traffic and engagement
Users are sometimes looking for a quick and easy solution to a question or problem, and they don’t always have the time to read through endless pages of answers that might come up on Google. Properly optimized visual assets can help your content appear in search results and provide users with versatile, at-a-glance solutions to their needs.
“Off the back of Google’s Helpful Content update, to perform well organically, you must put the user front and center. Copy isn’t always the best way to accomplish that. Sometimes a visual element such as an image example, a summary table, or infographic can communicate information much more effectively. Images are also versatile, in that images and graphics can be reused on social channels or for outreach purposes. This can then help to drive additional traffic and links to the site helping to increase brand awareness and site authority.” —Emily Capes, SEO Team Leader, The SEO Works
The right visual assets can create a competitive advantage
Not every competitor has the means to properly incorporate fresh and relevant visual assets into their content marketing. There are fast, affordable ways to accomplish this, but taking advantage of these sources can leave you vulnerable.
“Visual assets are extremely important for SEO for a variety of reasons. Adding original visual assets to any page helps add value and distinguish your page from the others you’re competing against that may use stock photography or no visual assets at all. Original visual assets are especially important for SEO in industries where searchers value first-hand experience such as travel.” —Justin Abbate, Account Director, Single Origin
What impact do visual assets have on SEO?
Depending how they are leveraged, visual assets can influence search engine optimization (SEO) in a number of ways, both from a technical angle and from the user perspective.
Visual assets have a verifiable impact on user experience to boost SEO
Some of the success measures of SEO are measured against user behaviors on your website, such as time on page, bounce rates, and other factors that including visual assets can help to improve.
“When we consider the human element of SEO and the importance of building an experience that keeps visitors engaged, we begin to realize that visual assets are an indispensable resource. The impact isn’t arbitrary; it’s verifiable, not just through visitors’ feedback but through data as well. Visual assets also open new opportunities for backlink building, search visibility, and social media content, all of which can positively impact SEO.” —Vito Vishnepolsky, Founding Director, Martal Group
Visual assets drive user behaviors that have an impact on profitability
Consumers are increasingly invested in the online presence of the brands they consume. This makes your content marketing inbound funnel key in the customer conversion process, and the addition of visual assets only increases the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts.
“People often forget that SEO isn’t just about getting more traffic to a website, it’s also about improving conversions and generating revenue. Visual assets help to improve the user experience and design of a website by diversifying the content on a page. This means website visitors engage with the content more, and improves the chances of them converting. There’s also an opportunity to optimize visual assets for search engines to gain more traffic.” —Elliot Bennett, SEO Team Leader, The SEO Works
Visual assets can elevate your content marketing above the competition
Reader engagement and improved conversion rates due to the use of video and visual content assets all speak to the power of using visuals in elevating your brand presence on social media and the strength of your website design. You’ll gain an advantage over competitors who might not be using visual assets at all in their content marketing efforts.
“Videos and images can be major differentiators to improve rankings against competitors who lack any visual assets. (Incorporating videos) into your website, especially when relevant, can also help with conversions. When it comes to images, they are one of the most underrated elements of blog posts, especially long-form. Images help to break up large walls of text for readability and should be used often to keep readers engaged.” —Sean Chaudhary, Founder, AlchemyLeads SEO & PPC Marketing
Remember that the impact of visual assets is indirect
There are many SEO tactics that have a direct impact on your page ranking and performance on search engine results. Visual assets, often leveraged as enhancements to existing content or posted with supporting technical SEO tagging on the back end, may not have a direct impact on your search rankings, but rather on the behavior of users that in turn boosts SEO.
“Visual assets don’t have a direct effect on SEO or rankings. But, they certainly increase the value and helpfulness of content, which can lead to readers staying on the page longer, not bouncing back to the SERP, and sharing the content with others–through links or social shares. So indirectly, yes, visual assets are definitely an important consideration for SEO.” —Brooks Manley, Owner, Brooks Manley Marketing
Top SEO tips for optimizing visual content
Search engine optimization is already a complex undertaking. Folding in additional visual assets adds a layer of complexity that requires an understanding of all of the processes that can be impacted by doing so. Insight from professionals across industries provides guidance for our readers who are looking to fold visual elements into their content marketing campaigns.
Accessibility is a major consideration with SEO
Accessibility for individuals with disabilities is a very important element of search engine optimization. Adding visuals and video content to your content across channels to enhance the accessibility of your content can go a long way towards increasing engagement and site traffic and indirectly boosting SEO.
“You want all people to be able to load and consume your visual content as part of the total experience you offer, regardless of any disabilities they may have. Optimize file dimensions and compression for speedy load times. Include metadata and, for audio or visual content, look for ways to add text-based, non-time-based versions of the content. Your visual content will grow in visibility as you optimize it. Content consumption and conversions will improve your brand’s reputation and ranking capability.” —Jonathan Fashbaugh, president, Pro Impressions Marketing
Remember to get technical with your keywords and on-page SEO
Failing to handle the technical elements of optimizing your visual assets means that search engines won’t be able to understand the relevance those visuals hold to your content. Photo tagging and editing image meta descriptions to include relevant keywords and long-tail keywords can greatly increase SEO performance.
“Think in terms of SEO when tagging photos and editing image meta descriptions. Ensure that your image naming conventions follow your online marketing strategy; for example, if you are promoting a certain keyword in your content such as ‘customizable pink widgets’ make sure that your images promoted across image search and your socials are all titled ‘customizable-pink-widgets.jpg’. Where possible, also add the keyword string to tags and alt-tags, so that page crawlers can properly index the page and improve search rankings.” —Phillip Dean, Director, Marmoset Digital Media
Don’t get caught using the same old visual assets
When it comes to stock photo services, there are only a limited number of visual assets offered across those websites specific to your industry and you can guarantee that your competitors will be using the best of those assets themselves. More and more marketers are realizing this, with 36% saying that they are using original, unique visuals[1]. With the advent of AI-driven image generators, you have options that can set your content marketing apart from the pack.
“Get ahead of your competitors when it comes to visual assets. If everyone is using the same stock photo service, try doing something different like using AI image generation or purchasing a premium stock imagery subscription for access to differentiated assets. This will keep your page unique and fresh, attracting more attention and boosting ranking results.” —Bobby Steinbach, Partner, MeanPug Digital
Visual assets are an important part of the design process
When incorporating visual elements into content on your pages, it’s important to leverage the insight of graphic designers and web designers. This ensures that you’ll not only be choosing or creating images that are relevant to the words on the page, but that those images will also support your brand image and support the visual aesthetic of your digital assets.
“When choosing visual assets, ensure the composition draws visitors’ eyes towards the written content on the page. Similarly, include diversity in the human subjects in visual assets, so as to ensure you’re able to appeal to as many audience segments as possible. Finally, you’ve done a significant amount of research to establish your brand standards. Images and visual assets should compliment your content in terms of color or font used so that it doesn’t detract from the user experience.” —Michelle Guglielmo Gilliam, President, Point Taken Communications
Mistakes to avoid when using visual assets for SEO
While incorporating visual assets into your content marketing strategy can yield numerous benefits, there are also pitfalls that can befall teams that take the wrong approach.
Take the time to understand how SEO works relative to visual assets
Whether you task someone on your team or partner with a consultant, it’s important you have a clear understanding of how to properly format and edit visual content in a digital setting to be as clear and visible as possible to search engine crawlers.
“Aside from not including visual elements at all, many marketers forget to be thorough when uploading assets. They skip titles and metadata, or forget to add schema where possible. These steps are intended to help search engine bots understand what the assets are, and how they relate to the written content. Some marketers go the opposite route and only include visual assets with the written content embedded in the design. This can actually hinder SEO, as search engines view this as ‘thin content” and penalizes these pages in search engine results.” —Molly Flynn, SEO Pod Leader, The SEO Works
Optimizing images and visual assets helps maintain page loading speeds
Google and other search engines prioritize the performance of websites in search rankings. When incorporating digital assets into your digital platforms, it’s extremely important that they are formatted and sized to minimize their impact on the performance and page loading speed.
“The biggest mistake in regard to SEO and visuals is not compressing your images or putting them in a modern, more compressed web format like WEBP instead of PNG. This will impact your Lighthouse scores negatively.” —Marianne O’Connor, SEO & Content Marketing Specialist, Austin Williams
Avoid using visuals that don’t support your written content
Recent updates to search engine optimization algorithms prioritize relevance in written content to your brand and business. Because this content should be personalized for the audience it’s targeting, your visual content should be equally personalized, as data shows doing so improves conversion rates by 200% and decreases cart abandonment on eCommerce sites[2]. When incorporating visual content into your content marketing campaigns, the visual assets you use should be aligned with this strategy.
“It’s crucial that those visual assets are chosen or created with purpose and according to their appeal to the target audience. One of the most damaging and time-wasting approaches to including visual assets is not doing the research to identify your ideal customer in order to best market to their needs. So they waste a lot of resources on images that they think are important, but a poorly researched customer base will ignore these, and move on to other things that interest them more.” —Brian Dawson, CEO, Customer Finder Marketing
Are you prioritizing video content?
Consumers are extremely interested in seeing more video content from the brands they care most about. In fact, 91% of consumers are looking for more video content from brands[3]. Video content requires specific formatting and features included in order to effectively improve SEO.
“Marketing performance data shows a clear correlation between poor SEO performance and infrequent posting habits, a failure to incorporate images relevant to your content, and poor technical SEO habits around metadata and asset tagging and titles. Because video is an extremely powerful SEO tool, ensure that you make it accessible on multiple platforms, make it evergreen when possible, add captions for maximized engagement in users, and include a video transcript for ease of search engine crawling.” —Sean King, President, RTS Consulting Inc.
Envisioning success through visual assets
Incorporating visual assets into your content marketing strategy requires a team with skills in multiple marketing disciplines. While you might have the depth of experience in your staff, keeping up with the ever-changing discipline of SEO marketing requires an investment of time even the largest and most skilled in-house teams might not be able to afford.
Do you know how your site is currently performing from an SEO perspective? Use UpCity’s Free SEO Report Card web tool to assess your website and find out where your opportunities lie. From there, pivot to the UpCity Marketplace to find an SEO specialist who can help your team improve and enhance your content marketing campaigns with visual assets so that you can visualize your company’s path to success in the coming year.