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You are here: Home / Archives for images

Why You Need High-Quality Images on Social Media to Build Trust

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

It’s no secret you need photos and images to fill out your website. After all, who wants to look at a website that’s 100% text? This is one of the reasons we’re always asking our clients to send us pictures of their business. Whether they’re group shots of the whole staff, pictures of your storefront or office building, or photos of your company truck on various job sites, you need to populate your website with pictures so visitors are more likely to trust you.
However, pictures are equally important outside of your website. From Google Maps listings to Facebook pages, and all the business directories in-between, there are a whole host of places you need to display high-quality images of your business in order to attract customers.
You see, with the way local search operates these days, it’s not uncommon for people to find and call a local business without ever visiting their website. Often, they get all the information they need from Google, Facebook, or a directory like Yelp. Therefore, it’s critical to establish trust on all of these popular channels with an assortment of high-quality images.
So what kinds of images do you need on your directory listings and social media pages, and why? Keep reading to find out!

A Profile Picture Shows Customers You’re a Real Business

When someone does a local search and sees your company’s page or listing in the search results, one of the first things that jumps out is your profile picture. If you don’t have one, users are likely to look past your listing. Why? Because you won’t look as established or as credible as other businesses that have a professional-looking photo next to their names.
When people are searching the web for local businesses, they’re essentially searching for a company they feel they can trust. As we all know, the Internet has a scam or rip-off around every corner; people are rightfully wary. That’s why you need to prove your authenticity from the get-go with a recognizable profile picture (think: your logo, a company truck, a shot of your storefront, or a team picture). Right away, a profile picture helps you demonstrate that you are, in fact, a real business and not some fly-by-night operation.

A Logo Demonstrates Your Value and Professionalism

Ideally, you’ll have a logo to use as your profile picture. A logo acts as your company’s identity—a quick visual aid people will remember when they think about you. It also shows people you’re not some slapdash operation, but rather, a savvy business that took the time to think about its identity and presentation. As a result, customers will associate a higher value with your business.
So, if you have a logo for your business, use it for all of your profile pictures on listings and social media pages. Having it as your profile picture will demonstrate your value and authenticity right away. Plus, consistency across multiple channels will further establish your professionalism in customers’ minds.
If you don’t have a logo yet, have Prospect Genius’s talented graphic designer create one for you!

A Photo Gallery Makes You Stand Out From the Competition

Once users have actually clicked on your listing or social media page, they want to see what makes you uniquely qualified to meet their needs. This is where having an abundance of photos puts you above the competition. Show off previous jobs you’ve completed, share action shots of your team on the job, and “aww” us with adorable pets. In other words, highlight the unique personality of your company. Don’t be afraid to get a little personal.
As much as customers want to learn about your qualifications and service offerings, they also want to see the human side of your business. That’s what will distinguish you from other companies nearby that offer the same services.

A Cover Photo Acts as a Virtual Storefront

Lindsay Kolowich of Hubspot says, “Having a social media profile without a cover photo is like having a brick-and-mortar business without a store sign.”
The majority of social media pages and online directory listings now include cover photos. Cover photos take up a lot of space at the top of the page, so leaving this large section blank is not a good look. Instead, cover photos are a good opportunity to capture people’s attention and show off an important aspect of your business. Many times, a picture of your real-life storefront (if you have one) will work well here, because, again, it shows customers you’re a real place. However, you could also use this space to highlight your favorite service offering, a special discount, or a large group photo.
Bottom line: You need a high-quality image as your cover photo to captivate your audience and display more of your personality. Leaving it blank is not an option.

Photos Are All About Building Trust

Photos are especially crucial for local service providers like appliance repairmen, HVAC technicians, plumbers, and so on. In these types of trades, you travel to people’s homes and businesses to complete a job. This means people have to feel comfortable letting you into their building before they hire you. If your listing or social media page doesn’t prove to them you’re a real business, they’re not going to trust you. If they don’t trust you, they’re not going to call you for the job.
So, to recap, the ideal Google listing or Facebook page will have:

  • A professional logo as your profile picture
  • Quality photos of you and your team members on the job, as well as your completed work
  • A high-quality photo of your storefront
    • Not a brick-and-mortar business? Use your company truck or van. It’s essentially your storefront on wheels.

Ready to submit more pictures for your website or off-page promotion? Need us to design a logo for you? Don’t hesitate to reach out! We want to set you up for the most success possible.

Enrich Your Local Business's Google Profile by Adding Images

Last Updated: September 22, 2016

We’re always harping on business owners to up their photo game. Websites with photos simply perform much better than those without. Plain and simple.
But did you know it’s just as important to have photos on your business’s Google profile, too?
This hasn’t always been the case. In fact, it’s only been in the last year or so that Google and Bing have been displaying images and logos in their local search results. They made this move as users increasingly want to see photos of whatever they’re searching for.
As of right now, images aren’t automatically displaying in search results for every business—only for businesses in certain categories. However, as images in search results are bound to become an expectation rather than a bonus, it’s likely they’ll be automatically generated for all categories before long.

Add Images to Your Google Profile

That’s why, regardless of your industry, your best bet is to set up your Google profile with high-quality images sooner than later. In his latest article on Search Engine Land, Wesley Young gives some great advice for optimizing Google profile images. Check out some of his suggestions:

  • Take control of which images appear on your listing. Don’t let Google set a default profile photo by selecting one of your images at random. Go to Google My Business yourself and select your own profile photo.
  • Make sure the image is cropped and sized to fit perfectly.
  • Make sure your profile photo is a high-definition image: no graininess, no visibility issues.
  • Don’t use blatant stock photos because they’re usually pretty easy to detect.

Want more? For Young’s full list of suggestions, head over to his article on Search Engine Land: “8 Tips to Make Sure Your Google Profile Images Boost Your Local Search Results.”

5 Quick and Easy Tips to Improve Your Site's Ranking

Last Updated: September 7, 2016

Your site’s ranking is important. That goes without saying. It’s not the be-all and end-all, but it’s definitely a top concern for businesses that want customers to find them.
So, let’s say you’ve already worked hard to fill your site with informative, relevant content and captivating images. It’s frustrating to discover that this isn’t quite enough to get your site ranking. Are there any other simple tweaks or adjustments you can make to improve your site’s ranking?
Absolutely!
In this post, we’ll take a look at five quick and easy ways you can improve your site’s ranking today.

1. Make sure your site loads quickly.

It might surprise you to learn that load speed has a significant influence on ranking.
Indeed: Google and other search engines actually factor your webpage’s load speed into your overall ranking.
Why? Because when a page loads quickly, the user experience is more pleasant. Therefore, the user is more likely to stay on your page, which increases dwell time and potentially the number of pages they visit on your site. This signals to Google that your site is worthwhile.
On the other hand, if your page is loading too slowly, the user is far more likely to get frustrated and move on to another site. This increases bounce rate, decreases dwell time, and stops the user from browsing other pages on your site. All of these are bad news for your ranking.

Slow load speeds will drive users crazy

Easy fix:

Use Google’s own PageSpeed Insights to see how efficiently your webpage loads. If your pages aren’t loading quickly enough, reduce the size of your images. This makes a huge difference. The best part? It’s super simple to do.

2. Don’t overwhelm users with big chunks of text.

If you have a lot of written content on your page, break it up into smaller paragraphs with subheadings.
When users see a giant wall of text, they get overwhelmed. In turn, they often scan the page quickly before they move on to another page or a different site altogether.

Too much to read is overwhelming

But with catchy subheadings that break up your text, you can draw the user in and capture their attention more immediately. At the very least, the user will read over your subheadings and skim the content under each one. Even if they don’t read your content word for word (and very few will), they’ll at least stay on your page for substantially more time. And, as we explained above, a higher dwell time will improve your site’s ranking.

Easy fix:

Create appropriate subheadings by using Heading 1 (H1) and Heading 2 (H2) tags. This helps your page appeal to search engines, as well. For SEO best practice, add at least one target keyword to each subheading.

3. Feel free to link to other pages on your site.

Do you have multiple pages of useful content on your site? Use them to your advantage! Internal links are a great way to boost your SEO value and improve your site’s ranking.
If there’s a logical way to link one page to another—i.e., the content is related with similar keywords or they offer supplemental information—then you should absolutely do so. Not only does this provide information to the user and keep them on your site, but it signals to search engines that your site contains valuable content. That’s a surefire way to ramp up your ranking!

Easy fix:

Give your site content a quick read and determine if you can make any connections between pages. Once you’ve decided which pages to link to each other, the rest of the work is a breeze.

4. Keep your outbound links in good shape.

When you want to improve your site’s ranking, outbound links are just as valuable as internal ones. But you need to make sure you’re following best practices if you want them to give you that extra SEO oomph.
One common mistake is leaving broken or dead links up on your site. Most websites are constantly updating, so it’s not unusual for a specific webpage to be taken down or for its URL to change entirely. However, it’s your job to make sure your site doesn’t link to nonexistent pages. Otherwise, users will get frustrated when they’re led to 404 pages, while search engines won’t trust you as a reliable site.

broken link

Easy fix:

If your site doesn’t contain all that many links, you can check them manually by sitting down and clicking on each individual one. However, if your site has lots of outbound links, it’s much more efficient to use one of the countless, free link-checker tools online.

5. Add a “Contact Us” page.

You already know search engines want to see that your site is trustworthy. That’s why you went through all the trouble of writing informative, relevant content in the first place. But did you know there’s a super-quick way to add legitimacy and trustworthiness to your site?
With a “Contact Us” page or something similar (like an “About Us” page), you’ll prove your authenticity by including verifiable NAP (name/address/phone number) information. NAP data is specifically for the search engines. But this page will also make users feel more comfortable with you, knowing you exist in the real world.
Bonus points if you add a contact form so users can e-mail you directly!

Let users e-mail you directly. Everyone's doing it.

Easy fix:

Hopefully, you already know your own contact information. That should make this a very quick project.

Consider user experience along with search engine preferences.

You might have noticed that all of our tips to improve your site’s ranking combine two things: users and search engines. Your ranking depends heavily on appealing to both.
This is because Google and other search engines are generally aiming to make user experience a ranking factor. That’s why Google favors mobile-friendly sites and will soon start docking sites that have pop-ups, for example. Simply put, Google’s long-term mission is to improve user experience, so they penalize sites that don’t cater to it.
So if you want to improve your site’s ranking, you must start by improving your site’s user experience.
Good luck!
Note: This is not a comprehensive guide to SEO or site rankings. These are just a few easy and quick things you can do to improve your site’s ranking.

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