Why You Should Optimize for Visual Search

Why You Should Optimize for Visual Search

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Why You Should Optimize for Visual Search

Video search is still a new concept in the SEO world. However, it’s increasingly popular, so if it’s not currently a part of your SEO strategy, it’s a good idea to make it so, if only in the interests of future-proofing your SEO strategy. But what exactly is visual search and how can it impact SEO?

What Is Visual Search?

Visual search is sort of like a reverse image search. With an image search, a user searches for a keyword. Then, the search engine displays images that most closely match the search terms. With visual search, a user loads an image into the search bar and the results are generated based on what was in the image. Visual search is a way for users to identify something that is in an image or to find results that are based on that image.

Where Can You Perform Visual Searches?

Both Google and Bing, the two most popular search engines, offer visual search capabilities. Google Lens is a feature that lets you take a picture of something on your phone and then use that image to perform a search. It’s also possible to do a visual search on Pinterest, which is an image-based social media platform. Pinterest’s results for a visual search are typically of other images that are similar to the one used for the search.

What Are the Benefits of Visual Search?

Visual search is particularly useful for shopping. A user can search for an image of something and find either similar items or where the original item in the photo came from. It’s also useful for directions and for identifying local landmarks, as well as business reviews, especially local business reviews. Others use it for translation. Yet others use visual search for food, to look up a recipe for a dish, or to look up nutritional information for food.

How Do You Optimized for Visual Search?

If you’ve been optimizing your images for SEO, then you may already have some of the visual search optimization steps taken care of. It’s a good opportunity to review your image SEO, however. The following steps are how to optimize for visual search.

Choose the Images for Your Website

The images on your website are what will bring visitors to your site from visual search results. Therefore, you should have multiple images. The more you have, the more opportunities there are to optimize for visual search. Each image should also be high-quality, relevant, and high-resolution.

Add Text Wherever Possible

Most SEO is text-based. With images, there are many opportunities for adding keywords to your images. The image file name, the alt text, and the image title, caption, and description are all good opportunities for you to add your keywords to the image. For this reason, keyword research is also very important in optimizing for visual search, just like it is for any part of your SEO strategy.

Mobilize Your Website

Just as with every other type of SEO, mobile-friendly websites are prioritized in the search results. For visual search, users are much more likely to be directed to your website if you have optimized your site for mobile friendliness. More searches are done on mobile devices than on computers nowadays, so Google prioritizes mobile sites ahead of those that aren’t optimized for mobile.

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