On-Page SEO Tips for Small and Medium Businesses: In order to optimize your on-page SEO strategy, incorporating top-notch media is an essential element. As an SMB owner, the quality of your visual content can greatly influence how your intended audience views your products and services.
Looking ahead to 2023, the utilization of high-quality images, graphics, and other advanced forms of media will serve as the key on-page SEO components that can aid in your success:
- Improve SERP rankings.
- Rank for competitive keywords in short-form video SERPs.
- Build organic backlinks.
Achieving these marketing goals can be made possible by implementing the two simplest actions for your current SEO strategy:
- Avoid relying on stock images for your blog articles and social media posts. Instead, prioritize the creation or generation of unique images specifically for your website.
- Increase your efforts in implementing SEO best practices to enhance the visibility of your content.
Creating High-Quality Content that Automatically Generates Backlinks
Backlinks play a crucial role in aiding search engines to evaluate the value of your website, ultimately determining its position on SERPs.
Having high-quality backlinks can propel your website to the top of Google search results. However, before we delve into how small teams can accelerate their backlink-building process, let’s first understand how backlinks can enhance your SEO and contribute to the growth of your business.
How Do Backlinks Help Improve SEO and SERP Rankings
Incorporating backlinks into your SEO strategy is crucial as they play a significant role in improving your website’s discoverability. Backlinks serve as indicators of your website’s popularity with users and signal to Google that your content is valuable and worthy of being linked to. Essentially, they act as a vote of confidence, with a higher number of high-quality backlinks leading to better performance on SERPs.
Link building involves gaining recognition and trust from multiple reputable, related websites. The key to convincing these sources to link to your website and establishing trust with Google is building backlinks. As a small team, the most effective approach is to create content that naturally generates links.
Focus on building Organic Backlinks
In order to acquire high-quality backlinks, it is important to create content that is distinct, current, and more precise than that of your competitors.
High-reputation websites place significant value on accurate and unique content. Backlinks serve as a means of citing statistics, sourcing claims, and providing context. By offering relevant information within your niche, you can establish your website as an authoritative source, leading to an increase in inbound links.
What Content is Best for Organic Link Building?
Infographics are the most effective content for generating organic backlinks. Visual content, particularly infographics, is highly favored by marketers due to its enhanced shareability and digestibility. Infographics are 50% easier to read than full-length blogs, which makes them easier to share and faster to spread among readers.
According to a recent study, approximately 41% of marketers have confirmed that incorporating original graphics, such as infographics and illustrations, has helped them achieve their marketing goals.
SEO Infographic design best practices
If you intend to create an informational, comparison, statistical, timeline, or any other impactful type of infographic, it is essential to adhere to the following best practices:
- Start with a defined audience.
- Determine your infographic style.
- Create a wireframe of your vision.
- Determine your main success metric.
- Create an engaging headline and compelling pitch.
- Make it easy to find and share your infographic.
Focus on videos & images for competitive keywords
Visual search is increasingly popular among users seeking relevant information. In addition, video search is becoming more prevalent, with video results being displayed more prominently on SERPs, especially on mobile devices. Social media search is also gaining traction, with numerous users utilizing TikTok and YouTube search to find visual product reviews, comprehensive tutorials, and other types of content.
By integrating video into your content strategy, you can give your website a competitive advantage, as users will have more opportunities to come across your content.
How to connect images to competitive keyword SERPs
Performing competitive keyword research is a crucial initial step in any effective SEO strategy. It allows you to comprehend the needs and search intent of your customers, enabling you to connect with them. Your objective should be to target relevant words, queries, and phrases with high search volume, allowing you to rank better and draw more traffic.
However, how do you determine which keywords to focus on? How do you identify which images will generate the best results for each campaign? If you want to create successful content without the guesswork, Shutterstock is the tool you should use. Using AI, Predict recommends creative assets that are anticipated to perform well, providing you with immediate insights on the best images, templates, and colors to use in your design – instantly.
Implement Image SEO Best Practices
When using an image search tool, make use of the following advanced filters to ensure that you meet basic SEO standards: Size, Orientation, Colors.
Knowing how to find and use the right images is just one aspect of optimizing your website for visual search. Equally important is the way you format your images. Both your audience and search engines pay attention to the quality of the images you use and how they are placed within the page layout. By optimizing your images correctly, you can improve their performance and increase their visibility on search engines.
Six Image SEO Tips from Google
Here are six image optimization tips from Google:
- Eliminate image cumulative layout shift (CLS).
- Correctly size your images.
- Use the most suitable image file format.
- Compress images appropriately.
- Cache images in the browser.
- Correctly sequence your image downloads.
Use Images that are unique to your brand
If you have a small team, you might wonder how to get unique images that are not already in use. Fortunately, in 2023, you can generate your own images with Shutterstock’s AI image generator.
All you need to do is provide a detailed prompt describing the image you want to create, and the generator will use its creative intelligence to bring your vision to reality. This allows you to have unique images for your content that are tailored specifically to your needs.
Best Image Generation AI Prompts
Begin with this basic formula: Combine any noun with any verb and add your preferred artistic style. And there you have it! You can quickly create an image of, say, a unicorn riding a bicycle in a graffiti mural style.
How to use an Al Image Generator:
- Imagine anything! Then type it into the search bar. Click Generate.
- Shutterstock.ai generates a few versions for you to choose from.
- Edit the image in Create, if you like. Or just license and download.
Shutterstock.ai ensures that its leading technology is ethically developed, allowing you to safely license and use AI-generated images with peace of mind. The generator is trained on a wide range of diverse and inclusive licensed Shutterstock content and ensures that contributors receive proper credit for their work.
Use Emerging Search Trends
Keeping up with emerging SEO trends is crucial to stay ahead of the competition. One of the latest SEO trends to emerge is short-form video. Platforms like TikTok have popularized short and engaging videos, prompting other social media platforms to follow suit.
Instagram has emphasized its Reels feature, while YouTube has introduced Shorts, encouraging users to upload shorter videos. In light of this trend, it is important to incorporate short-form videos into your SEO strategy to capture your audience’s attention.
Use Short-Form Video SEO For Your Strategy
Interested in incorporating short-form videos in your SEO strategy but don’t have the time to shoot videos for specific keywords? Consider using Shutterstock’s Flex Subscription, which allows you to use your credits to search for high-quality stock footage that aligns with your brand’s needs.
How to Optimize Video for SEO
Maximizing the visibility of your short-form video content depends on the platform you use and taking advantage of the search algorithm.
To increase the chances of your video being discovered in the search, you should:
- Write a powerful caption.
- Create unique, memorable content.
- Use keyword-rich filenames.
- Adjust the aspect ratio/video length to the platform.
- Use proper tagging/hashtags.
- Add an eye-catching thumbnail/cover photo.
Improve ROI with Flexible SEO and Content Creation Tools
Take advantage of Shutterstock’s Flex free trial to access their vast media library, as well as their numerous tools, templates, and AI-driven technology to enhance your content creation and enhance your rankings. Elevate your content strategy and optimize your performance with Shutterstock – your ultimate content creation solution.
Effective SEO strategies rely on high-quality content creation. To take your marketing campaigns to the next level, consider using the Flex plan as your all-in-one media solution. Shutterstock has expanded beyond being a leading stock photography provider to become a comprehensive platform for creators. With Shutterstock, you can create the content you need to surpass your competitors.
Would you like to read more about On-Page SEO Tips for Small and Medium Businesses-related articles? If so, we invite you to take a look at our other tech topics before you leave!
