"Our image, featuring the company brand, very quickly hit top result for quite a broad search term. There IS a back door round there. And very often, all you have to do is open it."
It can seem impossible to take on the high-ranking domains when it comes to search engine visibility. But that's something I've been doing for the past nine plus years, and in this post I'm going to discuss a really effective method of leapfrogging some of those eminent domains via the back door.
If you're accustomed to reading posts on big media sites and megablogs, you may have established a mental image of the kind of pictorial content they normally use.
Widely, their image content has two vulnerabilities. One, it commonly comes from stock photo libraries or graphics suites, and two, it doesn't stand out in a crowd. It's fine as a visual prop at the top of a blog post, but are you going to click it if you see it on Google Images? Probably not.
A very large proportion of high-ranking article publishers (and bloggers in general) regard images as an afterthought. It's not unusual for a writer to spend two or three days researching and drafting the article, and less than five minutes sorting out the illustration.
This affords you an opportunity. If you have the right picture, and the right title, Google Images can drive an absolute bucketload of traffic to your blog post.
When it comes to driving traffic from Google Images, you should think of the image and the post title as a combination routine. It's not enough just to include a great image in your post. People can download that image directly from Google, so if the image is in itself enough to satisfy them, they're probably not going to visit your site at all.
Gladly, however, Google also displays the title of your post beneath the image thumbnail. That enables you to create a package. The plan is that you make the image both aesthetically impactive enough to catch the eye, and intriguing enough to prompt a look at the title. Then you make the title intriguing enough to prompt a click through to your post.
There are a couple of reasons why this routine can serve as a giant-killer. Firstly, unlike Web Search, Google Images serves results on infinite scroll, so content from sites with lower ranking has more chance of being seen. And secondly, the priority ordering of Google Images is significantly influenced by interest in the individual images. So when people do scroll, and trend towards singling out your image for media engagement, Google's machine learning will begin to nudge it gently up the page.
Let's explore the concept with a screen shot from Google Images. I used the resource to search for JavaScript courses, and this is what I found…
That is an absolute sitting duck for someone who can produce just one really eyecatching, enticing and/or intriguing image. Almost everyone is using the same idea. There are no images fronted by human beings. There's no curiosity. There's barely any familiar scenery from the real world. There's not really anything there that shouts: "HEY! THIS IS THE ONE!".
In fairness, I picked a very easy target, because the websites pitching for visits from potential JavaScript students know that most of the queries will come via standard Web Search.
However, even in instances where most searchers are seeking text results, it can be unwise to dismiss Image Search out of hand. Google regularly re-orders its search option tabs so, for example, the Images tab may appear where the Videos tab previously appeared. That means if someone is seeking a video course, they may unwittingly hit the Images tab instead.
But it's true, the vulnerability of most image selections won't be as exaggerated as it is in the example above. It's normally more competitive - especially if you're selling physical products. So how do you compete?
THE IMAGE
1. Start by making sure you use an original image.
There's often a strong temptation to use free, permission-granted stock images at the head of blog posts. They're ready made, and may even come with attribution code that saves you worrying about whether your credit is in line with the copyright conditions. And the practice of heading blog posts with stock images is, as I mentioned, followed by many well known sites, media outlets, etc. This seems to affirm that it's a good idea.
However, If you're using images that are already widely proliferated across the Web - as almost all stock images inevitably will be - Google Images will place you into a priority battle even to appear in the results at all.
The problem is that Google will ideally only display a given image once in a selection of results. Otherwise, the results start to look like spam. And that means maybe ten, twenty, or even two hundred sites are competing for just one place on the results screen for any given search term. You can see how widely proliferated a stock image is if you reverse search it on Google images. From Image Search, click the little camera icon at the right hand edge of the search box, and then paste in the URL or upload the pic. Then if you hit the All Sizes link, you'll get a sense both of how many sites are using the image, and of who the biggest of them are.
If the image you've chosen has already been indexed by Google, you'll be competing against all other sites that have written posts on the same subject as you, and headed them with that same image. If their sites are better established than yours, and their posts have gained more backlinks, you will lose that competition.
Major media sites and megablogs have high ranking status and know they will probably win the priority battle. So for them, using stock images is a corner they can afford to cut. But for smaller sites with more modest ranking status, using stock images is a bad move. It's just handing the Image Search presence to a site with more clout.
So if you're a smaller business seeking to compete through the "back door" of Google Images, use an original image, to which you own the copyright, and which no one else can legitimately publish.
2. Include only one image in the post.
I know this conflicts with advice about padding out the substance of a long post with pictorial matter, but if you're aiming to place a specific image into the results, you have to avoid the prospect of Google selecting the "wrong" pic for search display. I've learned the hard way that if you give a piece of software a choice, it'll far too often choose the very last thing you want or expect it to choose. Restricting the post to one image removes the element of choice.
3. Contradict the pattern.
Type your intended post title into Google Images and look at the existing pictures. Then make yours as significantly different as possible. If no one's using strong colours, use strong colours. If everyone's using strong colours, use monochrome. If everyone's using similar colours, use different colours. You're aiming to draw the viewer's eye directly to your image. And at very first glance, this is achieved through a pronounced variation from the norm.
4. Where there's life…
A human face in a picture forges an instant connection. Especially if no one else is featuring human faces, incorporating one or more people can be a very straightforward way to attract attention. Incorporating people is also a route one method of injecting intrigue into a photo - particularly (but not exclusively) through facial expression.
In fact, any living entity can wield an advantage over inanimate rivals. If you sell cat toys, and all your competitors have included pictures of the toy, you could leave them in the shade by including an original picture of a kitten playing with the toy.
I should stress that with a really great photo you might have an issue controlling unauthorised re-posting - that's one of the drawbacks of investing in great images. But you could mitigate against that by incorporating your brand name into the photo. I'd recommend trying to do that anyway if you're investing signficantly in original images. And I don't mean adding a watermark - I mean actually composing the photo itself to include your brand name.
5. Consider photo enhancement as an alternative to hiring a photographer.
You've almost certainly got the means to take photographs yourself, and if you're on a budget, hiring a photographer can be prohibitively expensive. So why not consider taking your own photos, but sending them for image enhancement? These days, you don't have to go to someone who charges professional rates to get a decent image enhancement job done, and if you pick the right imager, you can essentially give a self-produced photo a professional look.
In the compilation above, you can see an original product photo, followed by three stages of enhancement processing. Enhancement today encompasses much more than just correcting the exposure. Anything that will make the image stand out more is fair game. I've removed an accidental reflection from the chrome plating, evened the light distribution, improved the contrast, corrected the brightness, vitalised the colour, changed the colour of the guitar body, and finally added some subtle effects.
Why re-colour the guitar body? It does create a more dynamic aesthetic given the colour of the case interior. But far more than that, remember me talking about building intrigue?… Well, that guitar was not available in that colour. So any guitar enthusiast seeing the finished photo would be likely to click through to the post, just to find out if there was a rare exception.
One of the most common issues with self-produced photos is patchy and uneven light distribution. Pro photographers use their own lighting and/or high quality flash, and know how to position things so the light is even. But a good enhancer can rebalance the lighting digitally.
THE POST TITLE
Although I've placed the post title at the end of the sequence, it's incredibly important. Nearly a decade ago, I set up a photo blog, which did extremely well on Google Images. Back then, Google used to load your source Web page behind each image engagement, so your blog stats registered a page hit every time someone clicked one of your photos on Google. My photo blog stats were absolutely buzzing.
But in early 2013, Google ceased loading the Web page behind photo clicks, and my photo blog stats dropped off a cliff. About 60% of the page hits gone, overnight. That was when I realised that most people on Google Images don't click through to the source page. They just click the thumbnail, and if they want the picture, they download it directly from Google.
My photo blogs today take a very different form, and the post titles lead the charge. On my most recent photo blog, unless I can make the title into a reason for a viewer to click through to the post, I don't post any photos. In fact, despite the blog being crammed full of photos, a lot of people don't realise it's a photo blog. There's a lot of text. A lot of value in that text. And there has to be. If I don't deliver that added informative value, and shout about it in the titles, virtually no one is going to click through from Google Images. You have to make people click, and on Google Images, the only means you have of doing that is through the title.
Don't be reluctant to invest time in your post title, and remember that on Google Images, only the first few words of the title are likely to be seen. At all costs, you have to avoid the first few words suggesting that the whole of the value is in the image. Plurals are good, singulars are bad. "The History Of…" is good. "Swan on Pond…" is awful. Even if it's the best picture of a swan you've ever seen in your life, what's the point in clicking through if it appears that the post only contains that image - which you've already got?
SUMMING UP
The potential success of this strategy will depend on how much of your audience is likely to use Google Images as opposed to the Web Search. If you anticipate very, very few, bordering on nil, it's probably not the best plan. But do have a look to see what your competitors have on Google Images. If they don't have anything eyecatching, and you have a good idea for an image, it might be worth a trial all the same.
Be aware that on modestly-ranking domains, Google normally takes a bit longer to display images than it does to display Web Search results. Don't be put off if the text begins to appear but the picture doesn't. Keep checking back.
When I was creating the content for a healthcare agency I suggested and tried this scheme. We always knew the queries would overwhelmingly come through Web Search. But our competitors' image content was very "wallflower", and I went ahead, just to see what would happen. Our image, featuring the company brand, very quickly hit top result for quite a broad search term. There is a back door round there. And very often, all you have to do is open it.