15 Key Tips To Leverage Visual Search For Marketing In 2022

Visuals influence internet and social media users like nothing else can, and younger generations, in particular, value the ability to search online using real-life images or videos. With its ability to help consumers on the hunt for specific products find exactly what they are looking for, visual search is growing in popularity every day. Moreover, visual search is a huge boon for brands, as it can help to increase their visibility and boost their sites’ SEO.

Smart brands are leveraging visual search capabilities to stand out from the competition and draw more users to their sites. Below, Forbes Agency Council members share their best tips for ensuring website images and videos can be crawled, indexed and easily found by a user conducting a visual search.

1. Optimize Images With Long-Tail Keywords

Keyword research is imperative. You will want to optimize every image title and description on your site with appropriate keywords—particularly those long-tail keywords that are going to connect potential customers with the specific item for which they’re searching—to ensure your products and services show up in search results. – Sara Steever, Paulsen

2. Tailor Visuals To The Platform Being Used

Visual searches vary and must be tailored to the platform that’s used. I still think Pinterest is highly underutilized, as you can create content for a space that will pop up in a search if you’re a trusted resource in that space. Size, color and brightness all matter, as does using video versus still imagery. It goes well beyond just creating great content—you also need to be much more laser-focused in your strategy. – Scott Harkey, OH Partners

3. Create A Dedicated YouTube Channel

Google is the most popular search engine; YouTube is the second. If your topic lends itself to video, create a dedicated YouTube channel and optimize each video based on the question it answers. When people search for their questions, they will be taken directly to your videos and will learn about your brand and website. Optimized YouTube channels also often lead to video carousels that appear in Google search. – Sam Michelson, Five Blocks

4. Focus On SEO For Your Images

Search engine optimization for images is a real thing. What you name your image, its size and its format are all important when it comes to the overall SEO of your website. Try to use original images if you can, and make sure they are named appropriately. Naming an image according to a keyword phrase is much more valuable than naming it “Image 10.” Also try to keep the file size small—the longer it takes to load, the worse your SEO. – Jason Hall, FiveChannels Marketing

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5. Use Gorgeous, Approachable Images

One of the main things to consider is that all of the images need to be gorgeous. What that really means is that they must be approachable and beautiful. If there are some bad images out there and some good ones, the key to remember is that you will have searches that will show all of them, and then people can get the wrong idea about your product. – Jon James, Ignited Results

6. Develop A Consistent Aesthetic

Users, especially younger ones, value attractive, easy-to-read visuals. Develop a consistent brand scheme for your visual content—an aesthetic that will become recognizable to your audience—and design your visual media to immediately capture short attention spans. To further attract younger users, capitalize on current visual trends, such as short-form videos. – Tomas Oscar Andrén, UPRISE Management

7. Keep Visuals Clear And Compelling

Keep visuals clear, compelling and easy to understand. We’ve found that if you want to keep the younger generation engaged, keep the visuals funny, lighthearted and entertaining. It’s also important to produce and optimize your visual content regularly and consistently. – Azadeh Williams, AZK Media

8. Create Targeted Site Traffic With Optimized Images

Image optimization is crucial for every site. Let’s use this example: My child wakes up with a weird rash; I can take a picture of it and find similar rashes. I click on the image that is similar, and it takes me to a website telling me how to treat it. Lo and behold—targeted site traffic! There are so many ways to use visual search, and the technology behind it is constantly improving. – Stephanie Chavez, Zen Media

9. Make Sure All Of Your Images Are Tagged Effectively

If you follow the federal Americans with Disabilities Act standards, you’ll be surprised at how they also work for visual search. But the No. 1 factor, we believe, in creating a shareable image is that it expresses a bold argument or very data-rich content. When there is strong, internal research to be shared, turn it into a bite-size infographic—not long-form content. – Christopher Carr, Farotech

10. Don’t Bury The Visual Lede

Don’t bury the lede when you are cultivating content, unless your brand is all about using this angle. The more obvious your visual content is to the members of your audience you want to consume it, the better! Make it clear, high resolution and easy to understand. – Christopher Tompkins, The Go! Agency

11. Remember, A Picture Is Worth A Thousand AI Interpretations

In this connected era, it is crucial to understand how artificial intelligence, machine learning, object recognition and algorithms can be affected by color, objects, composition and other visual elements. All of this, together with targeted semiotic references that attract your audience and connect them with your communication objectives, subconsciously influences actions and perception. – Rodolfo Salazar, QUDOX

12. Provide Visual Search Engines With Sufficient Data

Visual search engines rely heavily on pattern recognition. As such, marketers need to ensure that they are providing visual search engines with sufficient data that can be matched against the images people use in their online searches. Some ways to improve visibility in visual searches include leveraging captions and alt tags/descriptions, using high-resolution images and naming files properly. – Lars Voedisch, PRecious Communications

13. Always Geotag Your Images

Geotagging your images is key. In order to appear in your target locations in keyword searches, you’ll need to embed the image with those keywords. Images are an excellent way to increase SEO efforts while also catching your audience’s attention. – Hannah Trivette, NUVEW Web Solutions

14. Match Search Intent To Maximize Visual Content’s Relevance

You can get as creative as you want with imagery, but if you ignore the fundamentals, it’s a wasted process. Google is the king of association; therefore, from aligning featured images with the context of the written content to proper file naming, descriptions and tagging (do not forget this step), you can do a lot to better match search intent and maximize your visual content’s relevance to searches. – Johnnie Munger, Wonderful Collective

15. Use As Few Words As Possible In Display And Search Ads

For display and search ads, keep it as simple as possible. Words still work best, but trim them down as far as you can. You don’t need to tell the whole story in one image—just interest people enough that they want to learn more, or at least think about it. – Al Collins, VShift