Hello Reader,

Before I get started, here's a hot tip: My favorite content redistribution tool, MissingLettr, is back on AppSumo. If you're not familiar with AppSumo, it's a marketplace where you can purchase software one time and use it forever—you know, like in the old days. This is probably my best software purchase of all time. I use it to recycle my content for a whole year, with very minimal work on our team's part. If you're even thinking about committing to content in the coming year, it's a must-buy. Yes, I'm an affiliate for AppSumo and MissingLetter, but like anything I recommend, it's something I use and love.

Someone recently commented on LinkedIn that I love optimization, and, well, this is pretty true.

It's just so much more interesting and effective to get the absolute most out of what you've got, improving and fine-tuning it along the way, than starting from scratch. And there's something so satisfying in taking something awesome and making it more awesome.

This is why I've been obsessed with image SEO this year. While it's not going to make or break your visibility, a solid image SEO strategy is a fabulous way to optimize what's already great.

The concept here is pretty simple: we're trying to get extra visibility in the search engine by using unique, rich imagery that supports the content on the page or post. You can see this in action in this article about SEO for coaches or here, in this very meta article about image SEO.

What you'll notice is that I've included infographics to SUPPORT the information in the article.
"Support" being a key concept here. This is not intended to replace information contain on the written page—that would be harmful to your website's accessibility and bad for the world. You're adding value to your authoritative content with images.

The cool, thing, however, is that Google Lens can "read" your unique images and pull information from them into the search engine. Plus, over 10% of searches in Google at any given day are specifically for images. These are your visual thinkers who aren’t being served well by most websites. So, you can walk up to them and say hello by using creative imagery on your website.

Image if you’re a business coach who has a flowchart people can follow that walks through the transformation you facilitate. Or an IP attorney with an infographic that breaks down the risks of not protecting your trademark. This adds massive value to your content and appeals to multiple types of thinkers. It's also makes for a better internet in a number of ways.

I absolutely believe that rich, immersive information is going to be the future of search. We’re already seeing signals of that new reality with the updates in Google this year and from discussions at #searchon22 last year (you can read my analysis of this here).

To me, this is incredibly exciting—the internet, especially search-based funnels, can be very, well, boring. And many folks aren't being particularly creative with their search funnels these days, despite my carrying the torch for the data telling us that in actuality creative content with unique perspectives performs better both in terms of search engine rankings and conversions to leads.

Here’s the thing: image SEO won’t make or break your visibility in Google, but it will amplify what’s there or help you sneak in ahead of folks who haven’t thought about it. If you'd like me to help you develop a strategy around integrating imagery into your search-fueled content, I am teaching a workshop on this next week (yes, the recording will be available). This is my last live workshop of the year, and the first time I've taught this in an online format, so it'll be loads of fun.

Talk soon,

Sarah

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