Stay Up-to-date with Walibu's Latest Blog Posts

The Rise of Visual Search - SEO in 2021 Pt 5!

Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Google keeps the world of online browsing growing and changing. It keeps experimenting with new search technologies, developing the search landscape. The motive is to keep providing users the convenience through advancements in search.

Google’s newest technology for search is visual search. It’s becoming one of the biggest trends in 2021. Apart from Google Lens, various platforms have developed different visual search engines such as Pinterest Lens, Snapchat Camera Search, and eBay Image Search.

The industry pioneers are very excited about this new development. Ben Silbermann, the CEO of Pinterest, has said that “the future of search will be about pictures rather than keywords. Indeed, visual search technology is making the search process easier for users.

We bring you a visual search guide to help you understand this trend better.

What is Visual Search?

Visual search is a search engine’s technology that involves performing a search using real-world images such as screenshots, Internet images, or photographs. The search query provides results that are visually similar to your search.

It works the same way as with keywords. But visual search technology is much more complex than the normal text search. Here, since the image itself becomes the query, search engines are getting better at understanding the components of images.

It’s becoming increasingly popular. According to research by ViSenze, 62% of Gen Z and Millennials want the visual search to all other types of searches. It makes sense because it is adding a new and convenient dimension to the search technology.

All you have to do is open the scanner and start scanning things. You’ll find the most identifiable objects. In addition to that, visual search is beneficial for shopping, directions, identifying landmarks, local business reviews, translation, recipes, nutrition information, etc.

How to Make Your Website Visual Search Optimized?

21% of advertisers have agreed to consider visual search as an important trend for their business. The percentage is set to increase. Let’s see how you can optimize your website visual search SEO -

Mobile-Friendliness

A majority of the features of the Google Lens results are from mobile-friendly websites. It’s because all of the visual searches are done through mobile devices. So make your website mobile-friendly.

Traditional Image SEO

Traditional image SEO techniques like optimizing image filenames and alt text are considered a factor by Google Lens. Make your website a combination of high-authority web pages to get ranked in the visual search.

Rich Content

Google has specifically stated that text content is important for image SEO. For visual search rankings, it prioritizes image results from webpages with long-form, quality content.

To optimize your images for visual search SEO, follow these tips -

Name the Images

Search engine crawlers look at the title of the images. So don’t let any image go public untitled. Instead, give a keyword-rich title to it.

Add Alt Tags

Adding alternative tags to the product’s images is important. Make it detailed and keyword-rich. Ensure that the description includes the specifications of the product.

Use Captions

Depending on the context of the image, include captions to your image. Explaining the image contributes to the image SEO.

Google Lens can identify a lot more than 1 billion objects today. Pinterest Lens has 600 million visual searches per month. Snapchat partnered with Amazon to roll out the visual search.

Visual search is gaining popularity year by year. 2021 seems to be a game-changer for it. Get your business website optimized accordingly right now to not miss out on opportunities.

If you need help to get your website optimized effectively, reach out to Walibu. We are digital marketing support experts ready to make your business’s online presence strong and robust.

To know more about SEO 2021 trends, follow our SEO blog series.