How To Take And SEO Optimize Images For An Online Store

Listen in! Pick up some expert advice to a reader's question that we selected from CyberSchmooz.

There is no online store without images. Since customers can’t see and touch the products in real life, merchants must provide enough photos to give them an idea of the item. To create a complete catalog, you must involve a photographer who will shoot the assortment. Professional services are expensive, so if you are just starting a business, it is better to do it yourself and give the saved money to website advertising or other needs.

Creating unique SEO optimized content for an online store is not difficult but requires some skills and equipment. So let's start right now.

Making a photo studio

If you sell small items, you can build a studio right at your home. For big objects, shoot in a warehouse where you store them, in a garage or rent a studio. You will need a solid color background, so take a large sheet of paper or order a lightbox. Alternatively, you can use the product's natural environment as a background. For example, if you sell books, put them on the bookshelves.

For lighting, use cold light bulbs and reflectors. If you're shooting during the day, use window light. To achieve a reflection of the object, place it on a piece of transparent glass with a smooth texture.

As for the camera, you must understand that product sales depend on the quality of the images. You can use your smartphone at the beginning while gaining experience. But after a while, you should definitely consider buying a professional camera. Also, a must-have for any shooting is a tripod. Don't trust your hands and use it along with long exposure.

Photo editing

It may seem that photos for online stores don’t require editing, because they should show the product as it is. Yes, you have to keep the exact colors and textures of the objects, but you also have to show perfect shots. Editing is essential but not too much. Adjust the colors, make the picture bright, crop if necessary, and clear the background.

Make sure your product is the focus of the photo. Foreign objects can confuse customers. If you need to get rid of an unnecessary subject in the frame, use the service https://retouchme.com/service/remove-object-people-from-photo-app.

SEO optimization

Image SEO optimization is easy-to-understand and will help your website:

Increase the relevance of pages to search queries;
Attract traffic from image search services;
Improve page loading speed and behavioral ranking factors;
Become more accessible to users with technical or physiological limitations.

Google search engine supports the indexing of JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF, WebP, and SVG formats. To filter out the copies, they consider the originals to be the images with the highest resolution and the best quality. Use an image compression service to reduce file size and not overload the page. Search engines use Alt and Title text, caption below, and text around the image to determine the content.

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