Use of images and videos on websites

Photos, graphics and videos make up an integral component of today’s successful websites. Whether a company’s internet presence, an online store, or a portal for a gallery, museum or travel agency, the use of images and videos on websites effectively support the provided content and significantly enhance these websites for both users and search engines.

Utilizing media on internet portals is a trend that can be observed all over the web. Companies want to improve their image on their website with photos and videos, and make their brand more well-known, online shops want to market their products, and organizations want to disseminate important information. But galleries, museums and archives also want to make their photos, images of objects or videos available to the largest number of visitors possible. Photos and videos arouse curiosity in the viewer, and create an incentive to engage more closely with the products or services.

Visual Impressions Fascinate Online Users

High-quality photos highlight shared information as a real attention getter, and break up massive blocks of text. In that images set meaningful accents and underscore provided content, they can distinctly enrich a website. As moving image sequences, first class promotional films or product presentations exert great attraction on the viewer, and often replace wordy text explanations. Content rich videos that convey certain aspects of offerings in a picturesque manner, illustrate technical processes, and make individual points of view vividly accessible, provide a terrific medium to call attention to goods and services

As powerful visual impressions, photos and videos increase the length of stay and conversion rate with users. It is vital to always incorporate photographically impeccable images with sharp contours, distinct subjects, and clear contrasts. The best source for photographic material to be used online is images taken with single-lens digital reflex cameras by experienced photographers. Original photos that effectively illustrate a direct and personal angle appear more convincing than the high-quality, but mostly standardized images from so-called stock agencies. Licensed photos available on the internet are better suited to set targeted optical stimuli, or to emphasize certain details.

SEO Tips for Images and Videos

The number of incorporated images should be limited to one or two meaningful photos per text, and the often considerable data volume should be compressed (with special online programs) to a maximum of one megabyte, so that you don’t waste memory space and to minimize page loading time. Videos that have become simple to create with even just a smartphone should not be stored on your website, but uploaded to applicable video portals (for example YouTube) that as a rule ensure high quality and good bandwidth, and then inserted from there into the relevant webpage. Videos can be shared with a large circle of clients, business partners and interested parties via links on websites, in social networks or in emails.

Media placed online should be easy for users to find via internal search functionalities and internet image and video searches. If you want to land at the top of search engine results lists with photos and videos, it has proven to be essential to optimize them to the requirements of Google and others, which means tagging them with appropriate keywords and classifying them in the correct categories. For good SEO results with images, they must first and foremost have file names that include the right keywords. Alternative image descriptions (for problems with the server, or accessible websites) should use tags to denote the contents of the photos. Title attributes and captions with inserted keywords can accommodate additional information. Pictures too that have numerous internal links as well as link from other internet portals have a positive influence on search engine rankings. With films made available over video portals, make sure to apply the chosen tags in the meaningful URL and the file name, as well as filling the title and description with keywords.

Use Caution with Photos and Films from the Internet

If you use external images for a website, copyrights absolutely must be respected, which means you must obtain permission from the photographer beforehand, as otherwise there is a threat of legal warnings or even possible high fees. The creators of the royalty-free photos available on some image portals (for example Wikimedia) have legally released their use, but there are still a few specifically noted rules to follow. On fee-based image portals the conditions of the respective stock agency must be observed. With images taken yourself, the question of copyright is not a problem, however you should be careful with identifiable persons in the images, because capturing people in photos without their consent violates personal rights. Fundamental similarities also apply to videos: incorporating published films from video platforms using a code from the rights holder on your own website does not constitute a violation of copyright law.