How GMB Photos Increase Brand Visibility
When it comes to your company’s digital success, discoverability is everything! How often is your business found when consumers look online for a product or service? If you are a brick-and-mortar business, the importance of local search cannot be understated. With nearly 60% of web searches now made from mobile devices and Google delivering Google My Business (GMB) profiles above traditional search results, optimizing local search is perhaps your greatest return on investment. The article below covers how photos on your GMB profile can increase brand visibility and yield higher conversions.
Photos Give You An Edge Against The Competition
From updating listing information to building reviews, numerous aspects of your GMB profile deserve attention. It is vital to optimize all areas of your GMB profile; however, neglecting photos is a consistent and costly mistake for many businesses. As reported by Magnified Media, local businesses have a median of 11 photos on their GMB profile. On the other hand, research shows profiles with 100+ photos have significantly more local discoverability than those with little to no images. According to Search Engine Land, profiles with more than 100 images receive 520% more calls, 2,717% more direction requests, 3,200% more maps views, and 1,065% more website clicks than average businesses.
It’s All About User Experience
Oxford Dictionary describes user experience as what it is like for somebody to use a particular product and how easy or pleasant it is to use. To maintain its status as the world’s premier search engine, Google constantly seeks new ways to provide its web visitors the best user experience possible. GMB photos help achieve this goal by allowing consumers to visualize a business before making a purchasing decision. For example, somebody looking for Italian food in their neighborhood will be more inclined to choose a restaurant with good ratings and delicious-looking photos than one with poor ratings and no images. The key point is imagery tells a story about your brand and enhances the user experience. Google recognizes and appreciates this by rewarding GMB profiles with more pictures higher in local search rankings.
Tagging Your Photos Appropriately
GMB does a fantastic job of making it easy to showcase your photos and videos in the correct category. This is Google’s way of telling you they want proper organization of your visual assets. Here is a breakdown of the different photo categories in GMB:
Identity – Includes your cover photo and logo. Great for establishing your brand!
Interior – Displays the inside of your building, office, or physical location. Make sure these photos display cleanliness and tidiness. Interior photos greatly help build trust.
Exterior – The outside of your building, office, or physical location. Be sure to show your sign, parking, street view, etc. The idea here is you want to make it easy for prospective customers to find your business.
At Work – Action shot of your team working.
Team – Simily are to at work photos. It’s essential to display your company culture and what it’s like to be an employee at your business. People want to support companies that have a great culture and treat their employees well.
360 – Displays a 360-degree view of your street view.
By Owner – A collection of all of the photos you have posted of your business.
By Customer – A collection of all the photos web visitors have posted of your business. You cannot remove customer photos unless they violate content guidelines or the law. Here is Google’s worksheet to remove customer photos.
Make Sure You Upload The Correct Photo Size
If you’ve invested the time to take high-quality photos of your business, don’t make the mistake of uploading the wrong file size into GMB unless you risk them looking blurry or pixelated. Images should be uploaded at 720×720 pixels and no bigger than 75 MB. You can reduce picture file sizes by uploading them to TinyJPG – a free program designed to remove unnecessary pixels without damaging the quality of the image.
At See Deep Local, we specialize in creating a customized digital strategy for businesses of all sizes. Please contact us today to learn more about how we can help widen your digital footprint and gain more customers.
