I have struggled many a time to find the right image for my website or a clients. Despite the fact Images are crucial to breaking up long blocks of text, conveying ideas or adding visual appeal they are still a pain in the ass to find. They are also a pain to make match your website brand and vibe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As an SEO nerd and not a designer the struggle is extra real because I don\u2019t have the deep skills that design wizards have to turn stock images from places like unsplash into something interesting or fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even worse, when I do write I like data and images that need to help convey complex ideas like infographics or charts convey a ton of information but no vibes. A vibeless site is a forgettable site – in other words – my site images should reflect my site as well as the information I am writing about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cA vibeless site is a forgettable site\u201d<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
So, my challenge has been this – how do I create images that are interesting for my site that are engaging?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ironically while I am still working on it for this site every day I found it to be easy for my pool builder website Crazy Creature Pools. Lets come back to that in a minute. First lets look at why we should focus on creating some custom images (outside of them just being better).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Enhanced Visibility in Image Search Results<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Designing your own images for your blog can help your rank. Sounds counterintuitive, because Google doesnt make aesthetic judgements but there are more than just the aesthetics of an image that are important to SEO. Custom images allows you control over the minutiae of image file SEO for example.
Image File SEO
Creating custom images means complete control over how you are seen visually and how Google reads your image metadata. As we\u2019ve already asserted – what gets seen gets clicked. But, first we need to get to those top spots in Googles results.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAny image you don\u2019t create yourself comes with metadata that Google uses to understand its relevancy. Some of the metadata that Google has been shown to review are things like image file name, tags and meta title. Google also uses machine learning to understand the context of what is in the image to back up the meta data they review and vice versa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[IMAGE OF AN IMAGES META DATA]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When you create an image yourself from scratch by doing your own photography or taking inspiration and editing other photos in tools like Photoshop you are able to craft image metadata to better rank for your chosen topic. This metadata is embedded in the image itself before you even get to optimising it by including keywords and phrases in file names, alt texts, and descriptions for onapge SEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Onpage SEO Boost<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Onpage SEO is easier when custom SEO optimised image files are added to your content and the extra layer of SEO that you add to that for onpage SEO is more effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, if your blog post is about “infinity edge rectangular pools,” a you can see here. I have created a custom designed image in Canva that uses a seed image of a pool (lifted from Google search but attributed fairly to the owners). To make the image both branded but interesting in the SERPs i have used Canva to add custom colours and wording that both Google and social media sites like Facebook can read with their algorithms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I set the alt text for the image to say;<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Custom meta data from your custom images enhance your onpage SEO by aligning the clues Google sees from the onpage data with what your image is claming to represent in its alt text and description.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\n \nRethink Your Visuals<\/h3>\n \n
If your site doesn\u2019t feel quite right, your images might be the reason. We walk through what works, what doesn\u2019t, and how to fix it.<\/p>\n \n \n \n