One of the more powerful ways to increase traffic to your website is to use images that people find interesting. Good images can increase your website exposure and get you better search engine results on Google. If you do it right, then some of your images will go viral and bring you more exposure than you have ever dreamed. But before any of that can happen, you need to choose the right images for your website and present them in the proper manner.
Everyone loves cat pictures on the Internet, but you are not going to do much for your business credibility and your web traffic if you post cat pictures when your website does not deal with cats. The pictures you post on your site need to pertain, in some way, to your business theme.
Your sporting goods business could create a picture of a cat wearing a basketball uniform, but is that the image of your business you want to portray? The images you post must be in line with your business model and the kind of public image you want to create.
The easiest way to put pictures on your website is to either take them yourself, or hire a photographer who gives you permission to use their work. If you take a picture from someone else’s website and post it on your own site, then you are stealing that picture and the photographer has every right to come after you for compensation.
There are websites that allow you to buy pictures and give you the full permission to use them on your site. If hiring a photographer is out of the question, then check out the picture hosting sites online and make sure you read the rules on how to legally use the pictures you buy.
While SEO tags may not be nearly as powerful for creating search results as they used to be, they still offer value within your website. If you have a search function for your site, then the tags you put on your pictures will make it easier for people to search and find those pictures.
The SEO tags on your pictures may not hold as much search value as they used to, but the picture captions can definitely help you to get more traffic to your site. Your picture captions should be brief, a little funny, and include the picture citation. Even if you took the picture, you should still put that citation in your caption to protect yourself in case the picture goes viral.
Controversial pictures do generate a lot of traffic, but it is usually for the wrong reasons. You are not going to create a sustained rate of traffic by posting controversial pictures on your website that have nothing to do with your website content. Keep the pictures clean and keep your business in mind when you post them.
Pictures can be very helpful in bringing more traffic to your website on a regular basis. When you have that occasional picture that goes viral, then you have a chunk of marketing gold that will bring you new traffic and new customers.
