The Best Use of Google Images to Handle E-commerce

When it comes to online marketing, images create a positive experience for any potential customers. Imagine yourself as a potential buyer of any product. What are the common things or images that easily attract you? Here is The Best Use of Google Images to Handle E-commerce Sales.
For those operating in the e-commerce industry, Google Images becomes a blessing as the search engine giant partnered with Getty Images.

The New and Improved Google Image Search

The image search of Google is one of the search engine’s consistent features.

When Google began to seriously improve the image search service until it became the massive image library today.

Google’s image search feature gained further attention from internet users when Google and Getty Images announced a partnership in 2018.

Why is Google Image Search one of the search engine’s consistent features?

According to a press release, the reason for this was to provide a better experience to google users and visual content creators.

According to a tweet from Google’s Danny Sullivan, this was also part of a broader effort by Google to help connect search users with helpful websites.

That sounds a lot like normal SEO talk on the surface.

And since most of the media coverage of this change centered around the fact that Google had removed the “View Image” option with this update, it was easy to miss the real difference here.

Thus, it further cemented the idea that this change was just another ordinary Thursday for Google.

But when you look a little deeper at what actually changed, this transition has a more significant impact than what you may believe at first glance.

Because while it seems that removing the “View Image” option and replacing it with “Visit” is just meant to change our concept and to annoy desperate college students, it’s a shift in the way we search via images.

One less-heralded statistic from the last few years is that 72% of search engine users search for images before purchasing.

That means that when someone comes to your site via a search engine, there’s a good chance their search started with Google images.

Before these changes, websites weren’t typically in the limelight.

The uproar that surrounded the removal of the View Image option seems to indicate that most users searched for images to use for another purpose.

But now, if someone wants to download or save an image, they have to click through to the website.

That means you have an opportunity to sell to them now, where before they would never see your brand.

So in a way, Google has created a new and improved channel for customers to enable E-commerce sites to acquire customers.

How does Google Image Search Works?

Say you search for a pair of binoculars to take hiking this summer.

You search for binoculars and then decide you’d instead find a set that looks more compact.

Here’s the “front page” of your search in Google.

None of this has a brand, there aren’t any ads, and it’s relatively simple to browse through and find a set of binoculars that meets your needs.

If you click on an image, a window will expand and display a larger version of the image.

You’ll also see an option to Visit, Save, View Saved, or Share.

Since they’re in the mood to potentially buy, the best bet is to have these images attached to a product page like this one.

At this juncture, it points out that this is technically the “top-ranked” image on Google.

It’s on a site for B&H Photo Video and very clearly linked to a product page.

Without knowing the actual stats of this site and page, there’s a good chance that more than a few sales have closed through the exact path which has been shown.

But the interesting aspect here is that this page is not on the actual front page of Google.

In fact, when you scrolled through and didn’t even find this website in the top 10 pages on Google’s search results.

So it’s even more incredible that this image is at the very top of an image search, and it displays an opportunity for more brands to do the same thing.

Especially considering that it wasn’t until the second visit that Google put sponsored ads into my image results:

E-commerce marketing professionals now have a viable window to create a new and improved channel for generating sales.

By focusing on the SEO of the images on your product pages, you can now rank on an image search that can generate more revenue for your business.

How to Start Implementing On Your Images to Capitalize Development

1. Optimize file names and alt tags

When Google crawls your site and bumps it into a series of numbers with a .jpg at the end, it tells you that it sees an image.

So when optimizing your images for SEO, the very first place you should start is by ensuring that the products on your site have descriptive file names and alt tags.

Here’s a relatively simple example of a descriptive vs. non-descriptive file name.

If Google were to crawl your site and see a series of numbers followed by .jpg, all it can tell is an image.

But with the keywords of corgi, puppies, adoption, and NYC added, Google can accurately assess the contents of the image and rank accordingly.

This is partly a guarantee that your image will display on Google’s image search results.

From there, the next part of your image that you’ll need to optimize is your alt tag.

Much like your file name, alt tags signal to Google what your image contains.

Each alt text is embedded in the HTML of your website so that when Google crawls your site, it can “see” the image.

Here’s an example from the earlier binoculars page:

Notice that the alt tag, in this case, is the same as the product’s title.

It contains the keyword “binoculars” and is an accurate description of the actual contents of the image.

It’s a relatively straightforward bit of text that once again will make all the difference on a search engine results page.

When you upload an image, all you have to do is select that image to see this menu:

From here, you can change your file name and alt text appropriately.

This will position your images so that it can potentially rank you on its image search when Google crawls your site.

You’ll struggle to rank at all without these simple elements.

2. Use Images that are Unique and Interesting

You may think that this point goes without saying, but the vast and repetitive use of stock photography online would seem to say otherwise.

For example, if you were to search online for a lawyer in your area only to see something like this:

Chances are you wouldn’t click on that image.

Better to use a relevant and interesting image for every page on your site, especially for your product pages. The last thing you want is for someone to pass up your site because your image isn’t the most relevant to their search.

3. Utilizing user-submitted images

Social proof is one of the best factors that make people trust your website.

It comes in the form of testimonials, case studies, or survey results that serve as social proof that helps you get to the top of Google’s image search.

Most modern brands use these to convince the market of the efficacy and usefulness of their products.
Social proof is one of the best ways to increase trust in your brand and improve conversions.

But with how image-oriented our current social media lives are, we now see a vast amount of user-generated social proof content in the form of pictures.

Engaging with your audience on social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat has changed how we interact with images and can further improve how you optimize your images’ SEO.

The result means that you can start finding user-generated content by merely interacting with and incentivizing your social media audience.

The key to these images is that they have to be sincere and truly user-generated.

You also need to ensure that you integrate your user-generated images on the right page.

And, of course, you need to ensure that you’re legally using the images you end up placing on your site.

But once you have all your ducks in a row, the great idea is to implement your user-generated images on your product pages.

As you can see, the bottom image scroll comprises user-generated images that used the #VPBeauty when posting on social media.

The company browsed these images for the highest quality options that it felt showed the best side of their brand.

Then, it embedded these images on their product pages to provide immediate social proof when a visitor sees them.

And since these images are on your website and can be optimized accordingly, they can rank on a Google image search and potentially bring more traffic to your site.

4. Reduce your load time

Page speed actually plays a massive role in SEO.

Quick-loading images contribute to a user’s overall experience, and Google notices them.

Recent studies have shown that images on websites are typically the most significant elements that need to be loaded by a user.

Images, on average, comprise more than half the data of most web pages.

So when you’re optimizing your product page, there’s a good chance that the image you use is slowing down your site.

That means to rank your images on either the front page or an image search, and you need to find a way to create a smaller image.

That is where image compression comes in.

Image compression is the practice of taking a large, bulky image file and effectively shrinking it to a fraction of its size.

When there’s less to load, your site loads faster.

Generally speaking, image compression can yield results like this:

This image is clear, sharp, and pleasant to look at.

If I weren’t telling you it was a compressed image, you probably never would have guessed.

But look at what happens when you take this same image and compress it even more:

The colors go all wrong, the lighting is poor, making the image hard to look at.

This is the darker side of what can happen if you compress too much.

There isn’t too much difference in size between these two photos.

The first is about 350 KB, and the second is about 70 KB.

And when you compare that to a photo that may contain thousands of KB, you begin to see how much this helps improve your load time.

So compressing images is a balancing act.

Go too far, and you get a bad image.

Don’t go far enough, and you’re undermining your SEO efforts altogether.

But how can you easily optimize your photos to ensure that they load faster and rank higher?

To start with, we recommend testing the speed of your site using Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

This will let you methodically insert the URLs of your product pages to test how quickly they load.

If you see less than optimal results, PageSpeed Insights will give you a breakdown of which elements will improve your site’s load speed.

If you see the option to Optimize images, you can click the drop-down menu below to see what needs to fix.

PageSpeed Insights will tell you the exact file or files that need to compress, as well as how big of a reduction it needs.

Once you find out which files need to compress, it is recommended to use a site like JPEGmini to help you complete the task with just a few clicks.

Other options are TinyJPG or ImageOptim (Mac only). Choose lossless compression, so you don’t lose image quality.

As you can see, there’s arguably no noticeable difference in the quality of these images to the naked eye.

But in Google’s case, it would notice a clear difference between the original file and the resulting compression that’s more than three times smaller.

This can drastically increase your load time and even put you under the bar recommended by PageSpeed Insights.

All you have to do is upload your photo with a few clicks.

Then let their system work its magic.

You’ll have a compressed file that’s indistinguishable from the original that’s much, much smaller.

In one case, a brand had let its site load speed drop to abysmal levels in a way that started tanking its traffic.

It even got to the point where PageSpeed Insights showed a zero score for their optimization.

In a large-scale effort to combat this, it overhauled its image sizes and compressed the size of its web pages as much as possible.

As a result, it saw a return to “normal” traffic levels.

This is a clear signal that image size matters when it comes to your SEO.

If you let your images slow down your site, you run the risk of turning away your users and decreasing the chance of a sale.

And if your image is too big, Google will likely rank another image over it in its image search.

So if you want to drive your e-commerce sales with image search, it’s better to start implementing crisp, compressed images on your product pages.

This will increase the chances of organic traffic and could ultimately help you edge out your competition.

Conclusion

Google image search has come a long way since 2001, and it seems the ride isn’t over.

With its new partnership with Getty Images, the way we search and use images on Google seems to have changed in favor of the brand that gets there first.

And since the majority of e-commerce shoppers browse images before they buy, this development has clear implications for online sellers.

So to help set your brand apart, you need to optimize your images, know The Best Use of Google Images to Handle E-commerce Sales.

Start by ensuring that your alt tags and file names are optimized so that Google can “read” your images appropriately.

And, of course, make sure that the images you use are relevant to your search and interesting enough to make a user want to click.

Then, start leveraging your social media presence to build a pool of user-generated content.

These images will provide social proof and allow you to optimize even more images for SEO.

And finally, take steps to ensure that large image files aren’t negatively impacting your site’s load time.

If you approach your images correctly, you will have further optimized your site for Google’s image search. With this, you put your SEO in a better position altogether—the Best Use of Google Images to Handle E-commerce Sales.