by MasterWing Creative

Images and videos are important parts of your event’s story. People love visuals on their desktop and mobile – far more than copy! Optimized visual content – photos, videos, infographics, memes – have long-lasting benefits beyond the life of your event or your blog post. Visual content can also online rank and authority, and how that can help promote an event or cultural experience long after that post was made.

On a recent episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Kim and Kourtney were discussing how Kim’s last few Instagram posts had just under 4million views each, and what Kim should post next to drive those posts to each have over 4 million views. Visual content matters and views matter – and if there is one thing the Kardashians know, it’s about how to get views and increase your rank and followers!

SEO – Search Engine Optimization – is the strategy of designing content to increase your rank and online visibility. That’s why you’re posting visual content: to get views and promote your event or space! SEO strategies apply to visual content as well as copy. Here are three SEO strategies you can use to boost your visual content so it drives targeted traffic to your website far after your event is over.

1. ALT Tags

Google can’t see pictures. ALT tags – or alternative text – describe an image to search engines so search engines can show that image to people who are searching for information on the subject in the image. ALT tags can also boost your SEO and reach when you use your keywords as part of the ALT text.

For example, the ALT tag for a photo from an event you organized that is published on your blog and social media could be optimized by using the event name, your name and your keywords:

Delray Beach Craft Show | Amanda MacMaster | MasterWing Creative Agency

6 Ways ALT Text Expands The Reach Of Images

1. Accurate ALT tags help search engines understand what your website page, blog or social media post is about and show it to people who are searching for information on that topic.
2. Relevant ALT tags are search signals that impact your rank. The fact you have ALT tags on your visual content helps is a signal that increases your rank and reach on Google.
3. ALT text helps people who can’t see your images in Search to know what the image is about, which helps your SEO accessibility rank.
4. ALT tags make your images discoverable in image search. If you use strategic ALT on your visuals, Google will know to display them under Images search results.
5. If an image fails to load, the ALT text displays in place of the image. Many people have their email provider set to NOT display images to save space and reduce load time. You ALT text will tell people what your image is about.
6. Visually handicapped people can “see” your images. ALT text on images is required under the American Disabilities Act to make the internet accessible to the visually impaired. Screen readers allow the visually impaired to read the ALT text on images – and expand your audience.

2. Geotags

Geotags help your local SEO. A geotag is a hidden electronic tag that tells the geographical location of a photograph or video or another image to Google.. This means that if you are posting an image about your event or your space, a geotag tells Google where you are located – so your image can come up when people are looking for information related to your event or services on search engines.

When you add a geotag to an image, you can put in the exact location you want tagged – it does not have to be the location where the photo was taken. This allows you to customize your image’s location and optimize your local SEO.

There are free and easy tools to add a geotag to an image; one of our favorites is https://geoimgr.com/

Geotags are beneficial for visual content because:

1. They provide information so your event can come up on Google Maps and more people will see your image and discover your event.
2. On Google My Business, images or videos with geotags give you an edge over your competitors who don’t optimize their images.

3. Compression

You can optimize your visual content by making the size of the file smaller without losing image quality. You can compress every image on your website before you upload it to your website, or your website might be able to automatically compress all images for you. Image compression will help both your load speed – which is a key SEO signal to Google – and your Google rank! Images that are too large in size slow down your website load speed – and gives a bad user experience, which Google takes into considerations when ranking your site.

There are many free image compression tools for your website or that you can use to compress your image before you upload it – without losing photo quality.

• TinyPNG is a free tool to reduce the file size of your PNG files before you upload them to your website, blog or social media accounts.
• Smush is a free image compression tool for WordPress sites.
  You can also reduce the size of your videos so they can be uploaded to your social media sites. Media.io Online Uniconverter is a free tool to reduce video file size without losing quality.

There are many benefits to optimizing your visual content – but the main reason to optimize images on your website and social media is so that people can find your event. You spend a lot of time choosing the perfect image to tell your story. When you improve your SEO ranking and improve your user experience, your visual content will reach more people and build your online presence for months – even years – to come!