Most small business owners are aware of the concept of search engine optimization, or SEO. SEO is used to help your company get found online in search engine results. The use of keywords, page structures, meta descriptions, and high-quality content all help promote your pages and get you discovered by your audience online.
However, there is another aspect of local SEO that often gets overlooked: the visual elements on your website and online platforms. Using the right visuals, such as images, graphics, and videos can help you localize your online presence. Optimized images and videos have a positive impact on customer engagement and a business’s ability to attract and retain a local customer base.
In this article, we’ll help give you the best visual local SEO strategies for small business owners.
Understanding the Role of Visuals in Local SEO
Visual content plays an important role in local search visibility. Images and visual elements reflect positively in search engine algorithms, which scan pages to see which follow best practice formats, including images and videos.
Visuals can also help build a stronger connection between your business and your customers. High-quality visuals make your small business feel more professional and authentic to your website visitors and potential customers. They help enhance the customer experience and bring your audience back for more.
Visual Local SEO Tactics
Visual local SEO can occur in more than one place in your online presence. Here are a few ways that you can use visuals to help build your brand and grow your business.
Visual SEO Strategies for Your Website and Blog
The first and most prominent place where you can use visuals is on your website. It’s important to fill these places with relevant, high-resolution images on all pages, including:
- Home page
- Appointment booking page
- About us page
- Services or solutions page
- Areas of operation page
- Contact page
- Individual blog pages
In addition to standalone images on your pages, you also need to make sure that your entire website has a visual flow to it that attracts visitors and engages your audience. A visually appealing and locally relevant website design helps you build up that positive visual local SEO throughout your website.
One way to help localize your website is to incorporate local imagery and video content into your website. Elements like local landmarks, events, and even faces around the community can help support your visual content.
You can create visual content around local stories and community events, then add your branding and highlight these stories across your online presence. Using videos helps leverage visual content to enhance storytelling and add some brand personality to the stories you tell.
It’s also crucial to keep important back-end SEO best practices in mind. That includes making sure that your files are properly named and have an alt-text description, along with adding helpful meta descriptions to your images and pages. You can add location-specific keywords to those descriptions and file names to further boost local SEO efforts.
Visual SEO Strategies for Your Directory Listings
Another place to use local SEO strategies is on directory platforms. In these directories, you can claim your business and create a profile that helps describe your services and your solutions. Upload visually engaging images to your directory listing profiles for more engagement.
You can use images while showcasing your services, customer support, and quality of skill. Using photos and videos can help communicate your ideas more effectively than just plain text. Just be sure to use consistent branding in your visual elements across all the directories you claim.
Visual SEO Strategies for Your Google Business Profile
Your Google Business Profile is the most important directory online, as Google is the most commonly used search engine. This profile is what will pop up in the side box on search results pages, and it contains some of the most useful information about your business, like your contact information, map location, hours of operation, areas of service, and specific solutions.
You can treat your Google Business Profile as an extension of your website. Add a variety of high-quality photos to your profile showcasing your business. You can also upload videos featuring your business and local events, and encourage customers to include photos in their online reviews. The more frequently you post on your Google Business Profile, the more likely you are to go up in rankings.
Visual SEO Strategies for Your Social Media Profiles
The social media platforms you use also require visual local SEO elements in order to be optimized. Create visually appealing posts tailored to your local community, and tag other local businesses or landmarks in your posts. The more visually appealing your posts are, the more engagement you are likely to get for your efforts.
Utilize platforms that are designed for visual storytelling, like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, rather than platforms like X/Twitter that might not be the best fit for highly visual posts. Another tip is to encourage customers and your social media community to engage by sharing photos and videos about your business.
Visual SEO Strategies for Your Online Advertising
Advertising is another area online that can benefit from visual local SEO elements. It’s also a channel that can often get mismanaged quite easily by small business owners. Showcase your location in your digital advertising by using ad extensions and incorporating local dialects and lingo, landmarks, and other things specific to your area in the imagery in your ads.
It’s also important to use multiple platforms for your advertising. Run ads on Google, Facebook, and other platforms. Some of these will use more visual elements than others, so trying out different places and perfecting your advertising strategy will help boost your local visual SEO.
Measure and Track Success
Finally, it’s crucial to measure and track success as you work on improving your visual local SEO strategies for small business owners. If you don’t track what you are doing, then it’s likely that you will overspend in some areas, underspend in others, and not perform to the level you need in order to achieve your goals.
Track the engagement metrics on visual content across the different platforms and channels you implement, like your ad platforms and social media profiles. That helps you determine which avenues are working for you, and which might not be the best fit for your business goals.
You can also analyze the impact your visual content has onthe customer journey by monitoring your customers’ behavior over time, with and without the visual elements. Check your website metrics and see if you get more visitors or visitors who stay for longer after you add a video to your page. You can then adjust your visual content strategies based on real performance data, not best guesses.
Get the Best Visual Local SEO Strategies for Small Business Owners with the Help of Surefire Local
Visual local SEO strategies for small business owners don’t need to be complicated. With just a few small tweaks and new visual elements, you can do a lot to improve your visual local SEO in the eyes of your customers and in the power of the algorithms. By taking the time to develop a solid strategy for your local SEO and including visuals in that strategy, you can go a step further than the competition and become a real local landmark.
At Surefire Local, we understand how challenging it can be to try and manage your local visual SEO. That’s why it’s so important to have the right tools that can support your efforts without taking up all of your time. The right platform will have the ability to update your visuals in one place without needing dozens of passwords and usernames. It will also allow you to implement changes across many marketing channels while remaining in the same place.
We’re all about helping small businesses establish their online presence by creating local signals across platforms and profiles that make it easier for new customers to find them. Surefire Local is the all-in-one marketing platform for local businesses, with features like:
- Website & Local SEO Optimizations: Create geo-tagged content that is published on your website, blog, and social media profiles
- Directory Management: Claim your business, edit your posts, and publish new content like photos and other visual elements for your business across 80+ online directory listing platforms
- Content Marketing: Use tools to create locally targeted and relevant content on your blog, Google Business Profile, business directories, and social media profiles
- Social Media Management: Get tools for scheduling posts, tracking engagement metrics, and responding to comments and tags
- Local Online Advertising: Design ads to attract only the attention of the customers within your service area
- Analytics & Reporting: Gain transparency into campaign performance and how much revenue your marketing dollars are generating, with AI-generated recommendations on specific actions you can take to see improvements
- Educational Resources: Watch webinars and read blogs designed to help small businesses learn all things local online marketing
To learn more about how the Surefire Local platform can help you manage your small business’s local marketing, attend a Surefire Local demo.