There was a time when we only focused on bulky, text-based articles and fighting tooth and nail to find the right keywords so it can improve our SEO practices. Today, SEO has evolved and is much more than that. 

The internet is becoming the land of visual stories where people can learn and absorb the information quickly. After all, in this busy world, who has time to scroll and read through a whole batch of complicated data and statistics to get to the juicy bits?

Not to mention that the human brain is mostly hardwired to absorb visual contents, making vivid imagery a more efficient and effective means of communication. So, it’s no wonder that visual content has now become a staple in content marketing strategy. What’s more, it’s also a powerful tool for marketers to boost their SEO efforts.

Now, the question is: how exactly is visual content a big help of your SEO strategy?

Let’s find out!

What Is Visual Content?

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, it’s crucial to know the visual content we’re talking about. You might already know that visual content is mostly image-based. They visualize the information, making it easier to digest.

In other words, they allow the viewers to absorb the information better and faster while sipping their morning coffee or even waiting during their commute. It requires less effort from the audience to get what they’re looking for.

Below are аive common types of visual content that can be powerful tools for your SEO strategy:

• Images. It helps your audience get an illustrated idea of your blog posts or articles. Also, it can add a desirable personal touch to your website or campaign.
• Videos. Marketing videos, like product demos and explainer videos, offer an efficient way to give your audience demonstrations about your brand and how it works.
• Infographics. This visual content helps you deliver important statistics and data in an eye-pleasing way. The audience should have no problem retaining the information presented.
• Memes/GIFs. It gives a friendly and quirky touch to your brand. Give the viewers a way to get familiar and feel like they are closer to your brand faster.
• Animation. It can help convey messages in a much more cost-effective and visually appealing way.

Now that you understand the top types of visual content, it should be easier to know how they contribute to your SEO performance. So, here are some reasons why you should make visual content a new weapon in your SEO arsenal

#1. Make Your Audience Stay Longer

Adding visual content to your content marketing strategy can make your audience spend more time on your page. That’s because the content offers digestible and more engaging information, so they tend to explore more about it.

Let’s take videos, for example. According to the latest statistics, the average website visitor spends 88% more time on a page with the video. And what happens when the audience interacts with your page for a longer period of time?

It can increase your average time spent or dwell time and reduce your bounce rates. Since both of them are crucial SEO metrics, all of it boils down to one thing: better SEO performance and ranking.

#2. Rank Higher on SERPs

It doesn’t matter how many times Google has changed and updated their algorithm, quality content that naturally attracts visitors is still the name of the game. In this case, visual content is one of the most important types of content that Google considers to decide your page rank.

Articles that include images tend to appear at the top pages of search engine results and get viewed 94% more than those without. Meanwhile, a page that integrates video content is 53 times more likely to generate a first-page Google ranking than other web content.

Even though Google can’t read visual contents, the algorithm searches for images by matching shapes in other images and linking them together. So, you need to make sure to optimize the visual content on your website.

#3. Conveys the Information Better

Providing visual content to your audience makes it easy for them to learn more in less time. Let’s lean on science. At least 65% of people are visual learners, and more than 90% of information that is sent to the brain is visual. Therefore, it’s not that surprising that we process visual content 60,000 times faster than we would do text content.

From those staggering numbers above, it makes sense to add content types to your content marketing strategy, which audiences have an innate psychological resonance with. It helps the audience to retain and absorb the information better.

In this matter, the more the audience finds your pages or website valuable, the higher your chances to get a signal to Google that your website is trustworthy and provides good-quality content as different websites can afford.

#4. Bring More High-Quality Backlinks

Quality back-linking is one of the top search ranking factors. You need high-quality backlinks from other relevant websites (especially those with a high domain authority) to push your rank on search engines like Google. And the good thing is, visual content can help you with that. 

Since visual content is much more shareable and compelling than text-based content, it offers you a light-hearted way to attract links. Blogs that include video attract 300% more inbound links compared to those that don’t. Also, infographics can increase website traffic by 12%. 

With incredible shareability, visual content can gain your content popularity; therefore, more websites tend to reference your website. This way, you gain more high-quality backlinks that will send positive signals to search engine crawlers that your website is valuable and useful.

Wrapping Up: Over to You

In the world where everything turns digital, your audience prefers to consume content that’s easy to digest and absorb. That’s where visual content can help cater to your audience and stay relevant in this flood of content. 

What’s more important is that visual content offers you an easy way to keep up with Google by providing the best and relevant search results for its users. By all means, visual content can make you stand out from the crowd seamlessly. While text-based content will always be an integral part of marketing, it’s essential to use visual content that can play a pivotal role in all of your SEO efforts.