Monday 17 December 2018

Content Marketing trends to eye on in 2019

The marketing world changes every year with trends that would take you ahead of your competitors in the eCommerce industry. Every year there are new tools and technologies that emerge as the beneficial ones, fresh approaches are made, new spins are given to the old techniques and the bar of quality raises every single year. 

Out of all the kinds of marketing, content marketing is an essential one that can kill your conversions. Want to know more? Go ahead and read this blog. According to CMI & Marketing Profs, in 2018, only 39% of content marketers have a documented content marketing strategy. That number, however, jumps to 65% among top performing organizations. In fact, Content Marketing Institute went on to say that, “58% of marketers reported spending more on content creation in 2018 than in 2017” in their B2B Content Marketing 2019 Report.

Among all these things, you must know that content marketing is here to stay and nothing can explain this better than this report on The Drum that states that this time last year, it was estimated that the content marketing industry would be worth more than $400 billion by 2021.

With 2018 coming to an end within a couple of weeks, you need to armed with the trends that would prevail in content marketing in 2019. This blog will lay down the trends that you must keep an eye on and implement in your content marketing in the coming year.

Live Videos

Video marketing is a lot of worth than you think of. A report by Animoto in 2017 stated that 64% of consumers follow through on a purchase after watching a branded video on Facebook. And the video will only continue to rise in importance, with video predicted to account for 82% of global internet traffic by 2021. In fact, Impact also mentions in one of its blogs that 80% of consumers would happily watch a live video than read a blog.


Picture credit: Impact

It would be great if you invested in live videos and other video marketing strategies in 2019. Optimize your videos to make them engaging, unique and SEO-friendly so that consumers can view them from all devices.

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is something that has raised the bar of advertising your brands and products adding credibility to them. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, 59% of marketers intend to increase their influencer marketing budget in the year 2016. Moreover, Marketing Land quotes that the total brand spending is projected to reach $101 billion by 2020.

With the immense popularity of influencer marketers (those icons who have more thousands and lakhs of followers on social media platforms), their prices have gone up. In this case, if you want to enjoy the benefits of taking your products to the larger masses through an influential personality, you can think of investing in Micro Influencers (personalities with about 10k followers) and start your content marketing strategies.

You can invest in influencer marketing because the trends soaring 2019 would certainly take your eCommerce business to a different level.

Picture credit: CrateJoy

Social Media

Well, if you haven’t thought about how you’d use your social media optimization trends for 2019, you should get down to doing that as well. Why? Because social media plays an important role in content marketing as well. Let’s just assume that you’re new to social media and in that case, you can start off with Facebook. According to Pew Research Center, “Facebook remains the most widely used social media platform by a relatively healthy margin: some 68% of U.S. adults are now Facebook users. Other than the video-sharing platform YouTube, none of the other sites or apps measured in this survey are used by more than 40% of Americans.”

Picture credit: Pew Research Center

However, neglecting the other social media platforms would not be a good idea either. As shown in the image above, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, WhatsApp, and other platforms have also emerged as the most useful ones among consumers. While YouTube has been popular for the posting product videos and more, Instagram has come out to be the platform where influencer marketing has been in command. According to We Are Social’s annual Global Digital report, Instagram doesn’t just appeal to Gen Z. In fact, the latest figures show that brands can now reach more than 100 million users over the age of 45 via Instagram ads.

Picture credit: We Are Social

Regardless of who you’re trying to reach, it’s almost a guarantee they’ll use some form of social media, so your content marketing plan should make the most of these platforms. No matter whether you’re targeting using LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat or any other, your content marketing plan should make the most of these platforms.

Voice Search

Have you tried the smart speakers like Alexa and Echo? The consumers are According to ComScore by 2020, 50 percent of all searches will be voice searches.  In fact, younger people - your future customers - are far more likely to use voice search. This study, 71% of 18-29-year-olds are using voice assistants compared to just 39% of 44-53-year-olds.

Picture credit: Coredna

The trend is very clear with this data that consumers will be speaking more than typing to Google Assistant, Siri and Alexa in the next year. As you enter 2019, your marketing plan should include efforts to tailor your company’s search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to respond to voice search demands.

Invest in these content marketing trends coming up in the next year and take your business to the next level.

Thursday 9 November 2017

7 Quick tips for eCommerce SEO

The importance of the website ranking is quite known. Every website wants to rank higher in the Google search rankings. It provides a better coverage to the website and at the same time, the chances of getting explored by the users are also improved. According to a survey, the top 3 ranked sites of the Google search extract a total of 70% of the traffic. Hence, the importance of getting high in the search results is quite important. To get close to that mark most of the website try various methods and opt for outside help.

The SEO are the first thing that the website look out for. Whether the website is in its initial phase or has been put up for improvement, the SEO provides takes care of every aspect of the website to optimize it for better output. The optimization done by using the eCommerce SEO services helps the store to get better output and at the same time make the web store look better. The customers are also benefited from the optimization process and the interaction between the customers and the online store is well maintained.

Let us study the various areas where the eCommerce website SEO helps to make better conversions.

1. Keywords research

Keywords research

The search for any product by a customer is made on the basis of keywords. It is important for the web stores to earn the importance of keywords. In order to become, the top priority of the customers, the online stores need to be at the first page of the Google search which is only possible by making use of the relevant keywords. The eCommerce store must try to highly figure out what keywords best relate to their products. The web store must prevent the usage of the keywords that are not related to the products on the web store as it gives a rise to bounce rates.

2. Competitor keywords

Competitor keywords

Another thing to look out when selecting keywords would be the competitor keywords. In case the competitor is a well-established brand than the eCommerce store must refrain themselves from using the same keywords as their competitor is using. It will result in diversion of a larger traffic to that store. Thus, choosing the keywords which has a better impact to direct the customers to your web store must be given the priority.

3. Website structure

Website structure

Another aspect of gaining better traffic to the web store would be by providing the website with better structure. In order to make sure how to get a better site structure, the eCommerce store can refer to some of the well-established websites and look at their way of presenting the products to the customers. It would be an advised thing to categorize your products depending upon multiple factors. The better understanding of the products by the customers proves to be an effective tool in making better sales. Therefore, the website must try to present a better insight of the services provided in simple way.

4. Site errors

Site errors

The website might be facing a difficult time due to the errors that existed in the website. In order to make sure that the customers are always provided with results and should not face any difficulty. Moreover, the small errors in the website also give a tough time to the customers. These errors lead to the lost interest of the customers and the customers prefer to move on to other sites for purchase. The top errors you will want to correct quickly include redirecting any 404 pages to actual content, changing 302 redirects to 301 redirects, updating duplicate content pages, meta titles, and meta descriptions.

5. Website performance

Website performance

It has been estimated that with a delay of 1s in website response the conversion rate are lowered by 7%. Thus, it becomes an important area of concern for the online store owners. Visitors doesn’t like to hang around the website waiting for the response. If it takes more than 3 seconds for your website to load, you can increase the speed by buying more server space, using a different CMS. The fast response from the website ensures the customers that they can deal with their purchase instantly and exit the web store easily.

6. Mobile response

Mobile response

The usage of mobile has considerably increased in the past few years. It has been analyzed that almost more than half of the customers use their mobile phones to browse the sites. 31% of mobile Internet users “mostly” go online using their phones (Pew, 2012), 61% of customers who visit a mobile unfriendly site are likely to go to a competitor’s site (IAB), 58% of mobile users expect mobile sites to load as quickly or faster than desktop sites (Google, 2011). Therefore, it is highly recommended for the web store owners to optimize their mobile website as the website mostly use the duplicate content for their mobile website which creates a SEO problem in rankings.

7. Customer reviews

Customer reviews

The usage of placing the customer reviews on the product page has seen to be an effective way of attracting better traffic. The conversion rate can be improved by 14-77% by just adding the reviews. In addition to increasing conversions, customer reviews also positively impact your SEO because more reviews result in more content and frequent reviews produces fresh content, which Google loves to see. Thus, the reviews not only makes the customer’s decision of making a purchase on the product but at the same time also helps in ranking up the website in Google rankings.

Over to You

The small details that are made use by the SEO for optimizing the web store are helpful can drive the much-needed traffic. The proper implementation of these SEO techniques will surely help the online store to grow and make better conversions.

Sunday 17 September 2017

How to drive mobile app engagement along the customer’s life cycle?


Thousands of mobile apps are added to the various App stores every day. However, considering the limited space on the phones of the user, customer engagement is one of the major aspects that contribute to the success of your app. Keeping the online customers engaged in a mobile app is an ongoing process. 

In general marketing concept, there are 6 phases in a customer’s life cycle. Same goes true with the users of mobile app. The online customers of the eCommerce mobile app have 5 phases in their life cycle. These phases are mentioned below:

customer's Life cycle

App Discovery – This is when your prospect customers come to know about your mobile app. The engagement technique in this phase should include the ways he/she will first hear about your app.

App Download – This is when the prospect downloads and installs the app. However, just being aware of the app is not enough. The person needs to have a motivation to download the app and keep it on the phone?

Onboarding and exploration – This phase of the life cycle is crucial. It involves the reasons that tick them off to explore your services or just leave it without even using the app properly.

Reuse and Purchase – While some users may engage with the app others may just uninstall it. This aspect of the life cycle includes the ways in which you keep the customers loyal.

App advocacy – This is when the reviews of your customer and the word-of-mouth entice others to download and use your  app.

Having a sustainable personalized mobile app engagement in every phase of the life cycle is the key. The question arises, how can it be done? Well, listed below are some of questions that need to be answered in order to keep the customers engaged in each stage of the life cycle.

make your app visible

How make your app visible to your prospect?

It is not just the mobile app development that matters in order to allure the user to install it. You need to make the app visible to them. The very first step to towards achieving this goal is to have a clear app's description. The first few sentence of the description should compel the visitor to click on the 'more' button. Work on the UX of the app and invest in the stellar graphics of the app. Pitch the customers with enticing ads and generate buzz on the right media. As per Kissmetrics, the engagement rate for photos is 37% higher than that for text. App users are generally internet-savvy, so, you can use social media platforms to reach to the core audience.

compel the customers to download the app

How to compel the customers to download the app once they have discovered it?

There is a thin gap between promotion and influence. Making the app visible to the customers doesn't ensure whether it be downloaded or not. You need to influence the visitors in order to boost your downloads. The more positive reviews an app has, the higher its rating will be which naturally improves downloads. Include popular keywords in the title of the app and description. Use clever promotion tactics to engage the customer. Experiment with Promo codes, discounts and cash backs on downloads.

tick the customers off to leave your app

What can tick the customers off to leave your app without even using it properly?

Just like the eCommerce sights, even mobile apps face the risk of uninstalls without even being used properly. In the case of m-Commerce, tedious sign ups and too many permissions is a major concern that can turn off the customers. Make sure that app can surpass the installation process smoothly. Simplify the sign-up process by using social login modules. Asking for too many information is one the biggest mistakes in the registration form. Irrelevant notifications and pop-ups can annoy the user. Along with this, if your app is guilty of eating up too much data then the chances of uninstallation are much higher than otherwise. Moreover,  if your app happens to be the cause of this battery drain, chances of it being uninstalled are pretty high.

users engaged with the app after installation and first use?

How to keep the users engaged with the app after installation and first use?

Users tend to uninstall the app if it is not used for some time. So, keeping the customers engaged after the use is quite a task. According to a recent survey, the percentage of users who abandon an app after one use is 23%. App messages can help trigger your target audience in a compelling and targeted way. Reach out to the right demographics with customized and rich content. No one likes to receive irrelevant information and waste their time. More than half the users download apps to receive discounts and special offers. Thus, app rewards is a handy way to delight users and boost user retention.The event-based triggers is an apt way to interact with the app audience. Sending additional information regarding the products and discounts for a particular event or promoting further activity will reap better benefits and create better user engagement.

word-of-mouth of your mobile app

How to spread word-of-mouth of your mobile app?

The idea of a successful business is to retain the customer base and add more prospects to it. Word-of-mouth is one of the handiest ways to trigger the interest of others. One of the stats shows that 25% of search results for the world’s 20 greatest brands are links to user generated content. Convince the user to share their success story and experience related to your app, in form of video, pictures or even comments. Make the users share the app on the various social media platform. Engage your users through the main characteristics of your app and assure them an easy way to tell their friends about your app. Carefully choose the platform that provides services to boost campaigns.  Do not go with fraudulent activities and scammers. Moreover, do not make false promises to the existing and new users. Always claim the things that you can do.

Final words

The transition of an eCommerce business to a mobile app is a must to optimize your business fortunes among your rivals. The unprecedented growth in app usage makes it an apt time to develop your own app. Comprehend an outreach strategy along each stage of your customer’s lifecycle and avail our mobile app development services at Velsof that can help foster your future goals.

Wednesday 6 September 2017

Internet of Things: Transforming the world at a click of a button

Internet of things

The Internet of Things has the potential to change the world, just as the internet did. Maybe even more so.” ~ Kevin Ashton

With the aim of computerizing the everyday objects and devices, the Internet of Things (IoT) is all set to give yet another Eureka moment to the world. The in-home automated and eco-friendly devices are expected to harness the everyday life of the Internet-driven age by saving time, energy consumption and even money.

What exactly is Internet of things?

Talking in a layman language and from the prospect of a consumer, an IoT development project is an advanced technology and ecosystem that allow the physical objects to communicate with each other, collect and exchange data. The entire network of objects such as vehicles, buildings and other items are embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators and network connectivity.

The whole concept can be summed up by saying, "The Internet of Things refers to the ever-growing network of physical objects that feature an IP address for internet connectivity, and the communication that occurs between these objects and other Internet-enabled devices and systems. ‘Things’ in IoT may refer to a wide range of devices like wearables, connected home devices, circuit design, GPS programming, 3D design, and even the humans."

History of IOT

History of IoT

As per Wikipedia, the vision of IoT was first discussed in the year 1982 with a modified Coke machine at Carnegie Mellon University that become the first Internet-connected appliance. The very concept of integration and automation of the home appliance has seen a lot of innovation since then. However, the Internet of Things gained popularity in the year 1999.  With the introduction of Auto-ID Center at MIT and related market-analysis publications, Radio-frequency identification (RFID) was seen as a prerequisite for the Internet of things by Kevin Ashton. 

The vision of IoT witnessed major evolution in the year 2016 with the convergence of technologies such as wireless communication, real-time analytics, machine learning, commodity sensors, and embedded systems. In short, the fields of embedded systems, wireless sensor networks, control systems, automation have the major contribution in enabling the Internet of things (IoT).

IOT development the future

Why is IoT development the future?

The entire concept of IoT development is not just aimed at making the lives of people easier. It can make the entire issue with access control, vulnerability management, patching, monitoring, etc. a cinch. 

An article published by Kevin Ashton in the RFID Journal in 1999 said, "If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things - using data they gathered without any help from us - we would be able to track and count everything, and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost. We would know when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling, and whether they were fresh or past their best. We need to empower computers with their own means of gathering information, so they can see, hear and smell the world for themselves, in all its random glory."

IOT development platform

IoT Development Platform

These devices basically hinge on embedded programming that includes both software and hardware angles. You need to have a platform in order to launch the product. The Arduino platform is one of the most used platforms for creating interactive IoT devices. It offers an integrated development environment (IDE) that includes physical board processor, shields with individual libraries of C code for compilation and uploading codes.

Future scope of IOT

The future scope of IoT

The technology features the “always-on” concept whose growth is expected to span across business and consumers. Listed below are some of the moderate expectation of the scope of IoT. 
  • As per an extensive forecast by Cisco Systems, the IoT market is expected to project by 50 billion units by the year 2020.
  • Even the revenue is expected to grow to $7.1 trillion in 2020.
  • The businesses are expected to show the strongest gains. While consumer growth and adoption will be lower initially. 
  • The Internet of Things marketplace is expected to see increased adoption and revenue growth through the year 2020. 

Final words

Just like any innovation, IoT is expected to bring both beneficial and destructive elements. Such technologies will require a change in the mindset of the consumers, in particular. However, with the flamboyance of "smart world", the dust of Internet of Things that started a few years back is now showing a specific pattern of development. This will continue to foster the vision of having a technology-driven lifestyle in the future. For IoT services and updates, stay tuned with Velsof.com.

Monday 21 August 2017

What does it Take to be a Successful Web Developer? The Must Knows

What does it take to be a successful web developer, according to you? Skill set, knowledge of the platform and coding language! Is it all? Not really! Being a truly successful web developer requires a set of characteristics and personality trait. Rather than considering it a knowledge that can be mugged up, it should be considered a skill that should be developed with time. Other than the technical experience, there are a lot of things that you need to learn with time. Are you a website builder? Do you aspire to be a trail blazer in this field? The blog has complied some of the skills and traits that are a must for becoming a successful web developer. Have a look.

Analyze the customer requirement
 
Analyze the customer requirement  

The entire designing and development phase depends on the requirement of the user. In fact, the web development starts and ends with the user requirement. So, a developer who understands the needs of the end user will turn out to be a good developer. Analyzing the user need doesn't mean that you need to observe what attracts the user more. The visitors may initially be attracted to the visual graphics, but they may exit from the site if they don't find any value. Get an insight of what actually the users are looking for instead of what they are using.

Plan before you code
  
Plan before you code

No matter how good a coder you are, an efficient strategy is a must. Gone are the days when every department of the website building right from graphic designing to the marketing worked separately. In the competitive scenario, you need to plan everything ahead of time. Nothing should be kept as a reserve for the future. A developer should have be a good strategist as well. Planning ahead of designing is the first aspect of the same otherwise everything can get messy. The idea is to create a solution for the client and not just a website. Things like optimizing the load time, and creating a friendly interface should be considered first.

Keep yourself updated with the latest technology

Keep yourself updated with the latest technology

Having the basic knowledge of the HTML, Javascript and CSS is the building blocks of all web development. However, the technology keeps changing and you need to keep yourself updated accordingly. A single person just can't master each and everything, but being aware of the progression of the industry is important. For instance, if you are looking to build an eCommerce store, you need to have an idea about the various platforms and factors such as responsive website and others. Whether you are a builder yourself or you are planning to hire an eCommerce web development company, this basic information will help you get the heart's desire.

Be a market researcher

 Be a market researcher

The market research is a must, regardless of the purpose. Whether you are designing your own site or that of your client, doing an in-depth study of the market forces is essentials. Along with a high-quality code, an efficient user interface and user experience are essential. So, once you take the requirement of your client, check out the competitor's site. Analyze the good and the bad reviews of the users of the similar type of websites. Take the Heatmap analysis of these sites. This will give you an idea of the items on the site that are getting more attention from the visitors and the things that are being ignored.

Work as a team 

Work as a team

As mentioned above, the entire process of web development should be planned and executed simultaneously. An ideal developer should work as a team along with the designers, testers as well as the marketing personnel. The designers should be aware of the functionality of the pages that they are designing. The marketing team should be aware of each and every function of the site. The testers should know the goal you are working for. This will help them find the gap between what was required and what has been developed. A good team player means understanding the role on a larger scale. Haste brings waste, so instead of going ahead of others, try to take every aspect together and move steadily. 

Have a business sense

Have a business sense

The design and development in the real world are all about a good business sense. Regardless of the fact that you are a freelancer or a salaried employee, you need to take the charge. Right from taking the note of the requirement of the client to balancing cost, everything needs to be considered efficiently.  As mentioned above, it is not just about designing the site for the client, it is all about creating a business solution.

Summing up

Wrapping it up in few words, I would say that web development is a fun-filled, but challenging field. It is all about coping up with the ever-changing market scenario and brushing up the skill set with the technological advancements. So, whether you are hiring a PHP developer or aspiring to become one, keep yourself in sync with the changes and be an ideal developer.

Monday 31 July 2017

4 Types Of Seo Specialists Who Can Work On Your Website

SEO is broad, a single person cannot perform all the SEO tasks that are needed to be done. Most probably you might have already encountered a person claiming as an all in one expert though. Trust me, he is either a rookie or does not know about SEO at all.  

If you even casually divide the work done in a typical SEO, it splits into four different areas and each area can be mastered only if someone works delicately in it. Over the past few years of my experience as a developer and working with the website SEO, I have identified that there are typically four types of SEO specialists. It’s not a formal classification, but my views, you are free to disagree with me.  

In this article, I have tried to explain four major SEO tasks and how they are headed by respective experts. So, let just dive in.  

1. The data Analysts


Data analysis is certainly the most crucial part of the website SEO in every sphere. Whether it's an eCommerce store or a blogging site, understanding of large sets of data and the ways to parse them into useful information is an art, and it requires an analytical mindset.

An SEO specialist with the proficiency in the data sciences, statistics, can work best as an Analytics SEO. Such SEO practitioners have significant experience with data interpretation and can transform a raw data into useful SEO insights.  

For example, it's not that easy to understand most of the data that is shown to you by the Google Analytics. It requires a great mindset to read those data and utilize them to make an interpretation that would guide the teams to make the further strategies for the SEO improvement.  

So, I think it requires the skill sets of both the SEO and analyst to own a task of correlating data, building dashboards, and making audit reports that can be trusted by all.    

2. The Technical SEO 


Technical SEO may come from the development and design backgrounds. These professionals are either former web developers, Web designers, or software engineers. The motive for getting into the SEO task is simply to ensure that SEO is intact right from the development phase of a website. Moreover, due to their technical background, web development experience, and now working for SEO, they can be a useful asset for your website SEO as well as optimization. 

You would hardly find a developer considering the minute SEO aspects in the development phase. With a technical SEO in the team, the same can be made sure, and further more, other aspects like W3C compliance, JavaScript Usage, Image compression, CDN implementation can be well monitored by him.  

You can also expect these SEO professionals to work on On-page SEO, UX, and UI optimization as well. For example, a technical SEO would know the best practices to design the Web forms for optimized UI and UX.  

You might want to give more than just the admin panel access to a technical SEO to thrive and enact the code changes as well.   

3. The content SEO


The content SEOs are well aware of the on the page SEO techniques and their constant focus lay on almost all the aspects that determine the improvement in the search ranking organically and inorganically. From on-page content optimization, keywords research, back-links earning, to Guest blogging, a content SEO can handle every aspect that comes on the page.  

It is mostly due to the previous careers as writers, branding experts, corporate communications, PR, and Social media management, content SEO have a better understanding of how things can be written so that the search engines can rank them well in the SERPs.  

They play an effective part in the content marketing strategy preparation and implementation. They are also well equipped with the analytics skills to discover the content performance issues and prepare a road map to fix them.  

The major aim of the content SEO specialist is always finding the new ways to route website traffic to their sites and earn new backlinks in collaboration with the content developers. This field is not limited as the soul of the on page SEO lies in the content optimization for improved ranking.   

4. All rounders or Novice  


These are the learners class of SEO professionals who often rely on SEO plugins and tools. With lesser experience and willingness to learn new things they are not meant to be discouraged or ignored. I have come across various rookies who with their simple approaches and with the help of popular tools, have succeeded many times.   

Most often these SEO plugins and tools claim to provide an all in one SEO for the less experienced practitioners. And due to the extreme success of some of these tools, they might come to you with one-size fits all approach. Eventually, the learners do become the experts as the time passes and they find that there is nothing like one tool can fix all issues.   

So, if you ever encounter any such SEO- be encouraging with them! In fact, if your SEO budget allows you to hire just a single person to run the SEO marketing, this novice class of SEO practitioners would work the hardest and cover most of the things. 

Everyone starts as a novice, every SEO learns through the wining history and SEO mistakes as well. Eventually, the learning curve increases and with the experience the novice becomes an expert. So never under estimate them. They are enthusiastic and always ready to fly higher without fear.

Monday 24 July 2017

Are You Optimizing For Google Image Search Results?

We have been making enormous efforts in improving the SEO for web search results on Google search engine. We have also been applying the same intensity of efforts on Google Voice search results. But, there is really a lesser segment that really cares about the Google Image search results. 
It has been so underutilized without knowing that Google image search is the second most used search platform after the Google web search or so called Google.com. That say’s an article on Moz.com

Are you really taking images seriously?


The image searches on Google Image is more than that of the search queries that are performed on any of the top websites like YouTube, Google Maps, Amazon, and also the Facebook. This information clearly means that Google image search shares a huge proportion of overall searches on the internet. However, knowingly or unknowingly, we often make mistakes with the images that we use and thus lose the visibility on this massive search platform.

How we post images and what mistakes we make?


Wrong Names:  People posting the images often overlook to optimize the images to show on the Image search results. They give some really unique names to their images which no searcher will use in the query. They give the names like "IMG_000023", "Image_1", "IMG_Edited_0012" etc. The probability of any user searching on the internet or Google image search with these strings is nearly zero. This means the image will never show up in the search result at least for the keywords wasted in naming it wrongly. And even if the image comes up in any random search result, it is due to the extra information feed (If given) like Caption, description etc. in Image SEO.

Wrong Names of Image
Unrealistic image file names can put you at a disadvantage in image SEO.
Wrong Keywords:  Some uploaders use the wrong names or random phrases in the image name, not even relevant to the image. Putting keywords not relevant to the image will push your image to show in the irrelevant search results. So, despite your image get listed on the top, it will hardly get a click.  Below is an example of an image labeled with the wrong keyword that made it appear in a search query for Smart-watches. Would a person searching for a Smartphone image click on it?

Wrong Keyword Name
Irrelevant keywords can make your images end up in an irrelevant search result.

Stock photos:  
Stock photos can be used in various events. However, overuse will make your search image listing unauthentic and unrealistic. Especially in the cases where you put an image to say something about you or your business. For example, the below image screen shot was taken for a search made for "Lawyers in Delhi". The circled images are stock photos which you might have seen many a time on different websites. They do not appeal you to click on them. Hence, Google will eventually lower the ranking of these images. 

Stock image
Stock images don’t provide the kind of authenticity and authority your image needs to have.

Overly sized:  
Large sized images take a longer time to load. You can't expect the users to wait for more than 2-3 seconds. Reducing the file size will considerably reduce the page loading time, but that does not mean you need to compromise with the image quality. There are various free online programs that can be used to cut short the unnecessary data and reduce the file size without losing the image quality. Use these tools to compress the file size and reduce the page loading time. 

Wrong image ratios:  It's important to post the images in a standard expected ratio such as 16:9, 4:3. Google in the search results view, uses the thumbnail views reduced to a small size. In the case of using the images in the non-standard ratios, Google will automatically resize the image to fit the standard ratio frame. Due to this resizing, the image thumbnail might loose the focus and valuable details might get omitted.

What should you do for better indexing and ranking with images?


Google doesn't see the images as it reads the textual contents. So the meta-data, labels, and descriptions provided with the images become crucial for indexing by the Google image search. Google uses this data to identify the images and their context of usage. 

The more easily and deeply the images are indexed, the more is the chances for better ranking in the search results. The following listed details are the main content that you should provide while uploading the images:

File name


As explained above, the file name is a fundamental and crucial entry that can give a context to your image. Never use irrelevant and unrealistic (IMG_00023) file names for your images. You should leverage this entry and provide a more appropriate file name that defines the image and its context. You can use your main keyword relevant to the image in the file name. 

ALT tags


ALT tags or Alternate Texts are the HTML tags that are used with the images to show up in case the image does not load or rendered properly. For example, in a browser where images have been disabled, the ALT tag will show up in place of the images. Also, if your image takes a longer time to load, till the image gets loaded, the ALT text will show up. 
This makes sure the search engines do not feel fishy about your images even if they are not rendered properly. Moreover, it will also give the user an idea of the image till it gets loaded completely on the browser. 

Captions


Captions are simply the text that appears with the image on the browser. Captions will always show up. They are generally shown just below the image. You must provide the captions to describe the context of the image to the users.

Image Caption
Captions provide the contextual meaning to the images.


Description


Descriptions allow you to put an explanation of the image by providing additional details like links, keywords, and context. They are generally used by the search engines to read the context of the image. They show up in the search results when an image is listed in the SERPs.

Image Description
Descriptions help the search engines to read your images and their context more easily.

Contextual information

In addition to the meta information, keywords, and description, Google utilize various other supporting contents and information to rank the images. The contextual information can be the page content, Page URL, other images around it, the image site map, Page title etc. You should keep these optimized to render a unified, relevant, consistent and related context of the image. 

Summing up


Images have always been an important element on the web. Though Google cannot index the images like the textual contents, it still uses the supporting texts to identify and judge the context of the images. It's really important to understand the role of images in SEO and do not overlook them as something less important. 

Optimize your images everywhere you use them; Articles, product pages, landing pages etc. A proper SEO of images will also ensure the better performance of the contents related to them. Moreover, they can promote your brand, store, products or services in the search results as well. It's time to invest the deserving time on images and unlock the uncharted potentials that you overlook now.