Image SEO and Images for ‘Freshness’

Question. I work for a handcrafted furniture company in ~. We have been working through  your work book and find it very helpful. I do have a small question. I take new product pictures every week. So each of our pages on our website is getting new images almost every week. My question is do images count as unique, creative content that help our SEO ranking? Does new images count for much or should we be focusing more on the 300+ blog posts and links from the outside? 

Answer.

• Everything helps! Google has many factors in its “algorithm” as to whether your website / web page will rank vis-a-vis a target search keyword. Among them, of course, are elements such as “Does the web page have the keyword in the TITLE tag?,” “Does the web page have a lot of textual content that contains the keyword?,” and “Are there many links to the website and the web page?” Of course there are negative elements, too, such as “Is the content ‘spammy,’ meaning ‘keyword stuffing,’ ‘bad grammar,’ or ‘duplicate content?,” and “Are the inbound links ‘spammy,’ meaning from suspicious websites,’ etc. So keep in mind it’s a mix of POSITIVE and NEGATIVE factors that drive your website / web page to the top of Google and it’s always COMPETITIVE vis-a-vis the competition.
• Image SEO. Images can appear on “Google image search,” which is a special type of SEO. (You’re not really asking about this – but FYI, it is not dissimilar to regular SEO. The images need the target keyword ‘in’ their ALT attribute AND they need text “around them” with the keywords AND they need inbound links). But if you understand image optimization, that may help you as people do search for furniture “ideas” by images.
• Images as “freshness.” So what you’re asking is subject to the first point (MANY factors / not just one), do NEW images HELP you website? YES, of course. ANY type of fresh content helps the website as it sends a “Freshness signal” to Google. Imagine a lighthouse rotating around every 30 minutes, and beaming out a light signal: we’re alive Google, 30 minutes, we’re alive Google, 30 minutes, etc. So sites that have NEW content are sending a freshness signal and ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL (see bullet #1 above), then they win. (Freshness if, of course, quite a bit weaker than powerful links).
  • Now, the 2nd part of your question is the RELATIVE power / influence of new images vs. new text content. I think you can see the answer here. All things being equal, and knowing that Google likes text, then a fresh and new “blog post” will have MORE impact than a fresh and new “image.” So, if it takes you 30 minutes to make an image and 30 minutes to write a keyword-heavy Blog post, and you are ONLY interested in SEO, the blog post is MORE POWERFUL.

You also mention links.  So again, if you can get a legitimate link then this has even more power. So, if you have 30 minutes to write a blog post and 30 minutes to be interviewed by the local newspaper AND get a link in that article, then the LINK is highest ROI. So it’s –

1. Links!  #1 factor in terms of weight
2. Fresh content. #2 factor in terms of weight (this assumes your ON PAGE SEO is already “in order,” e.g., you have LANDING PAGES and OPTIMIZED titles, meta d, content and a strong home page.
3. Fresh / new images. #3 factor – quite a bit LESS powerful than #1 or #2.

Of course one does not exclude the other: write strong keyword heavy content / landing pages AND write blog posts AND post new images AND get links AND get reviews.  It’s everything working “together” that out-competes your competitors and gets you to the top of Google!