{"id":6635,"date":"2025-01-22T08:53:36","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T15:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/?p=6635"},"modified":"2025-01-22T08:53:38","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T15:53:38","slug":"photos-for-local-seo-why-they-matter-and-how-to-get-them-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/blog\/photos-for-local-seo-why-they-matter-and-how-to-get-them-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Photos for Local SEO: Why They Matter and How to Get Them Right"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If there was a local SEO superhero, they\u2019d have the power of\u2026 PHOTOS!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, though, you don\u2019t need a cape to wield local business photographic superpowers; you just need a camera. Chances are, you\u2019ve got a halfway decent one right on your phone. Nearly all of us take photos these days to bridge our online\/offline worlds. This is why I\u2019m constantly surprised to see local brands both large and small leaving the photo sections of their local business listings largely up to the chance uploads of the public. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good customer photos can be a tremendous asset to your local business, but people often upload mysterious and unflattering shots, too. If this was your restaurant, would these images make people want to dine with you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I promise, I\u2019m going to spare you gross pics of cockroaches and other alarming subjects that I\u2019ve seen the public uploading to Google Business Profiles (GBPs). If you\u2019ve got content like this in your photo section, you have a janitorial problem to tackle before you\u2019re ready to show your best face to the public, but today\u2019s column assumes you are running a fantastic business. It just needs more limelight on the local stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe you\u2019re marketing a busy small business and just aren\u2019t convinced that your limited time budget should be invested in photography, because you doubt it will yield a meaningful return. Maybe your brand is a large, multi-location enterprise and priority hasn\u2019t been given to enabling GBP access to branch managers and franchisees so that they can contribute to marketing on-the-ground. I suspect this is one of the key drivers of GBP image neglect, as I routinely see great brands like Patagonia who have let months go by since they last uploaded new pictures and whose overall photo set is tiny. So much more could be photographed to properly represent this major branch in San Francisco:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Whatever it is that\u2019s been holding you back, your photographic future can be a brilliant one if you take inspiration from today\u2019s column on the power of local business photos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How important are local business photos to Google today?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When we look up a local business by name, what is the first thing Google shows us on a Google Business Profile? Imagery!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The entire top section of every listing is devoted to visual components, made up of photographs and maps. Not only this, but some landmark-style brands are seeing themselves being treated to the new Brand Knowledge Panel<\/a> instead of a typical GBP. Last summer my friend Claire Carlile<\/a> noticed this change for her long standing client, Folly Farm Adventure Park and Zoo<\/a>, when they started getting a mobile-like display on desktop, with an automatically-rotating slideshow made up of their images:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Google thinks photos are so important that they will automatically switch out featured imagery on listings for the same business to better match different search terms:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And have you seen Darren Shaw\u2019s dog story<\/a> which proves that Google\u2019s AI can identify the entities that exist in your GBP photos? As shown in this video, when you click on the Place Topics in the reviews section of your listing, Google often shows photos related to that topic. In this instance, tons of reviewers had mentioned the word \u201cdog\u201d in their reviews, earning that term a Place Topic button. Clicking on that particular topic generates an entire carousel of puppy photos that have been uploaded by either the business or its customers, as seen here: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are billions<\/a> of images in Google\u2019s image index (millions of which likely relate to local businesses), Google has invested in search by image technology<\/a>, and their new baby, AI Overviews, is filled with imagery:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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SERP features like \u201cPeople also search for\u201d are replete with images, as are multiple GBP features including Products, reviewer profiles, See What\u2019s in Store, Updates, and Explore More. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The degree to which Google allows filtering via segmentation in the main image section of GBPs has become truly extensive:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And in most recent news, Darren Shaw<\/a> has captured this video of a new review\/photo carousel which adds review snippets amongst the images. When you click on one of these snippets, you get a popup with more photos, a keyword, menu pricing if you have a menu item that matches the keyword, other reviews that mention the keyword, and video content:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, on mobile devices, photos went from occupying about 2% of screen space in 2016 to about 30+% by 2022 for local searches, as documented by Mike Blumenthal<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are just a few examples that go to prove that Google thinks imagery is an essential bridge between the online and offline worlds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How important should photos be to your local business?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Stats and studies can help you gauge the value of local business imagery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being trusted and chosen by consumers<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In 2017, Google\u2019s own study of 1,600 respondents (which is now hidden behind access permissions but some of the findings of which were captured here by Near Media<\/a>), found that 90% of consumers are more likely to choose a local business that has photos on its listings and 74% see listings with imagery as being more reputable\/trustworthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Increasing user behavior signals<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The 2024 Google leaks highlighted the emphasis Google\u2019s ranking algorithm places on user behavior signals<\/a>. A separate study by NearMedia<\/a> explored the impact of adding GBP images that had been vetted for intelligibility by grading them with Google\u2019s Cloud Vision API<\/a>. This process was put in place for some of the listings of a multi-location legal firm, with noteworthy results. The locations which had been improved with this photography saw a 117% YOY increase in clicks-to-call and a 119% increase in clicks-to-site. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helping Google match user intent<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019ve never used the Vision API to grade your own photos to see whether Google\u2019s bots can understand their contents, you can try it for free here<\/a>. It matters, because a study from Sterling Sky<\/a> indicated that rankings can be positively impacted when an image you\u2019ve uploaded closely matches what Google thinks a user is looking for. In order to assess whether your photos meet an intent, Google has to be able to \u201cread\u201d your images. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking both professional and intelligible<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The same study from Sterling Sky found that larger and better quality photos appear to correlate with ranking improvements. GBP image guidelines can be found here<\/a>, and you should strive to upload large, clear pictures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earning trust via user-generated imagery <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

User-uploaded photos are also important to local brands. A different study from Sterling Sky<\/a> found that reviews stay at the top of your profile longer when the reviewer includes images with their sentiment. Consider this in conjunction with a recent finding from GatherUp\u2019s large-scale review survey<\/a> (which I helped conduct) in which 37% of respondents feel increased trust in the authenticity of a review if it includes photographs of the reviewer\u2019s experience at the business. In fact, the images reviewers use as their Google profile pics are influential in their own right. 53% of survey respondents state that they trust reviews more when a reviewer\u2019s profile features a photo of them instead of a generic avatar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In sum, these case studies reveal that the time you invest in photographing your business (and inspiring other customers to do the same) can positively impact rankings, conversions, user behavior signals, and the degree of trust the public feels when encountering your online local business listings and deciding whether to give your brand a try.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An image best-practice gut check in 2025<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Historically, local business owners and their marketers have had to work hard to get Google to \u201cunderstand\u201d their images. Some traditional image SEO best practices have included optimizing file names to include relevant keywords and using alt text for similar reasons. There was also the fascination with the idea of geo-tagging images, despite multiple studies like this one<\/a> repeatedly proving that this activity had no demonstrable impact on organic or local rankings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While your local business should absolutely still be implementing alt text to ensure you are serving people with low or no vision, AI may be a genuine game changer when it comes to the visual components of the internet. There are interesting stories being published about how AI-generated alt text is assisting people with visual impairments<\/a>, and Google has long offered this feature<\/a> which describes images without alt text to people who use screen readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the local business context, Google\u2019s current abilities to use computer vision, machine learning, and neural networks could<\/em> mean that we\u2019ve reached a point where less of the heavy lifting is on our shoulders in trying to get the contents of our images understood. But, I don\u2019t want to oversell the perfection of Google\u2019s image comprehension.<\/strong> Take a look at this little experiment with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I uploaded a photograph of my painting of the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco to Google\u2019s Cloud Vision API. It\u2019s pretty amazing that, despite the fact that this is an artistic interpretation instead of a photograph of this actual California landmark, Google is able to identify multiple components within the painting. It sees that there is tableware, including bowls, and that there is food in the picture when I am in the objects layer of the program. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Things get even more interesting when we switch to the labels layer of the program. Google is turning up the following labels for this painting:<\/p>\n\n\n\n