Imagery and visual representation are not new things by a long stretch. In fact, man-made pictures and art have been around for millions of years. However, SEO and digital marketing have only just become a part of our lives and any business owner would now tell you that these elements have become the life blood of maintaining their revenue streams.

With copy alone, businesses can’t show off their wares, catch the eye, communicate more efficiently or truly engage with their audience and prospective customers. Imagery can also help your rankings as they add another element you can exploit to search engines and the billions of eyes scattered around the world.

Content and blog posts in particular are powerful in their own right, but they generate much more attention when they include photos and visual aids. According to HubSpot, content with photos generate 53 percent more engagement than text-only based content and draws over 100 percent more comments.

Isn’t this what your business needs?

It is one thing to attract a customer but it is another thing to engage with them, learn about them and then provide a solution to their problem. Whether this is selling them a product, offering advice or both.

While adding visual elements is better than nothing at all, it is much more beneficial to add something unique that connects with your audience and adds value to the written content.

Now, you may be stuck when it comes to sourcing your pics or need further advice on taking your picture game to new heights. While many start with purchasing stock images or taking their own, it is worth spending a little more and getting your own pics done via a professional photographer.

This way you are being unique, authentic and tying in your branding to your site by wearing your own uniforms or reflecting your business’s unique tone and themes. Authenticity is more important to many consumers than brand recognition, so putting this out there can really improve your conversions.

Problem V Solution

In my experience creating banners and image sliders I have always tried to show the solution and not the problem. For example, if you are an exterminator, don’t show a giant spider trampling your family; show a professional looking staff member or friendly face with all his or her equipment at hand with maybe a dead spider in the background.

GOOD >>

BAD >>

Choose pics with people’s hands in full view as hands communicate a lot as well as smiling faces and family pictures or whoever your specific audience is. No point having pictures of babies if you are running a gym and unless you’re purposefully trying to be silly or ironic, select photos that are relatable and reflect a human element or connection.

Five questions to ask:

1. Is this person close to the age of my target audience? 
2. Is this person doing something my audience would do? 
3. Is this image unique and of a high quality?
4. Is this photo interesting, valuable and engaging?
5. Is this how my audience might look most of the time?

If you are happy with the imagery on your site and it ticks all these boxes, then ramping it up could be your next move especially if your site has a blog.

By adding a variety of image types, you can add much more interest, fun and value to your content. When I say variety I mean infographics, gifs, alternate product angles and gifographics. Gifographics are relatively new, combining moving images and text into a super informative and valuable visual form.

Infographics combine imagery and data.

Gifs are moving pictures which are set on a loop. They can be humorous as well as informative.

Some tools you can use:

• Piktochart and Easilly for help with creating infographics
• Make a meme for memes
• Pic Search for picture ideas
• Fiverr to find creative slaves to do you work

Humans are intrinsically quite visual as we retain in memory an average of 80 percent of what we experience compared to only 30 percent of what we read. Throwing a little more resources at your site’s imagery and visual presence can help you reap many rewards and keep your site from looking like something out of the Stone Age.