I was recently asked by a client whether adding images to their site will increase their visibility in search engines. It isn’t a question I come across often, however it is indeed a valid enquiry.

If the pictures are relevant to the keywords targeted, then they may increase visibility on sites like Google Image search, however people searching for images are probably not searching for products to buy or services to use. Regardless to this, it does provide increased visibility of your site on the Internet, more specifically through different channels other than just ‘keyword search’ on the regular search interface. Having said that however, search engines are beginning to show images, video, news and other results within ordinary search results, so you may indeed find your site listed by and image located on it, at the top of Google search results. So in this case, yes it can improve your search visibility.

Image Results on Google Search

Pictures also give us another opportunity to add additional keywords to the caption of the images and the image tag that search engines read to understand what the images is about. This can increase the keyword density on the page, resulting in a search engine ranking the page higher as a result, if performed correctly.

Images, as well as other forms of media such as video and news items all help to increase search engine visibility and ranking as more and more people use services such as YouTube and social media sites to find information on the web.