6 Reasons Why Visual Content Is Great For SEO

The Power of Visual Communication...

As I was reading about the power of visual communication the other day, I came across a number of statistics and infographics outlining why visual content is so important in not only Marketing, but in communication in general.  And why not? After all, in 30,000 years of human communication, textual communication has only been with us for about 3,700 years. (Source)

The main reason that causes our high affinity for visuals is the wiring in our brains that is skewed towards processing visual content. Did you know the following facts about the magnificent machine we call a brain?:

• Visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text. (Source)

• Words are processed by our short-term memory where we can only retain about 7 bits of information (plus or minus 2). Images, on the other hand, go directly into long-term memory where they are indelibly etched. (Source)

• Half of the brain is dedicated to visual function (the eyes are regarded as a physical extension of the brain). (Source)

• Images are processed simultaneously while text is processed sequentially. (Source)

• Most people only remember 20% of what they read and 80% of what they see and do. (Source)

6 Reasons why you should use Visual Content

Now that we know how well we process visual communication, let’s note 6 important statistics that illustrate why you should use visuals in your marketing efforts:

1.  Articles with images get 94% get more views. (Source)

2.  Engagement rate on Facebook for photos averages 0.37% where text only is 0.27%. (Source)

3.  46.1% of people consider a website’s design as the number one criterion for discerning the credibility of the company. (Source)

4.  Videos are shared 12 times more than links and text posts combined. (Source)

5.  Viewers spend 100% more time on pages having videos. (Source)

6.  Colorful visuals increase people’s willingness to read an article by up to 80%. (Source)

One important thing to note is that it isn't enough to just insert visual content into your blog posts or social media channels; you need to optimize the images to generate traffic. Derek Halpern has the following 4 tips for optimizing images for SEO.

1.  Add alt text to your images to make sure that the search engine understands the images.

2.  Make image file sizes as small as possible for faster page load times.

3.  Give your image a file name to help with your search engine rankings.

4.  Use captions for your images because they are one of the most well-read pieces of content on your entire site.

    Cave Art Comic-Image courtesy of Mashable Comics

Visuals have long been part of our social network as humans. How have you used visuals in your marketing efforts today?

~Ramya