In SEO, keywords and backlinks often take centre stage, and for good reason, as they remain the foundational pillars of most ranking strategies. But in our experience, even with the best keywords and the strongest backlinks, there’s one factor that can still hold your rankings back: your website’s images.
As Google’s algorithms evolve, so too does its ability to interpret and evaluate visual content. Now, we’re seeing that image optimisation goes far beyond compression and img alt tags.
Now, context matters. Authenticity matters. User relevance matters.
We’ve found that simply adding the right image to the right page can improve your click-through rates and your user engagement, which can have a positive impact on your Google rankings. Images serve a far more operational purpose on your website than you may expect.
It’s important to establish here, at the outset, that we’re not talking about ranking in Google Images. Instead, we’re looking at how a strategically placed, contextually relevant image can help push rankings up – as it did for one of our client’s pages, which boosted from position #4 to #1 – and how you can use the same principles to achieve similar results, making your pages more clickable, more trustworthy, and ultimately, more visible.
Let’s dive into the case study, and see how this unfolded.
The Challenge
One of our clients had a well-optimised service page – one that was targeting the right keywords, had excellent on-page SEO and featured high-quality backlinks from highly relevant, niche websites. We even added internal links from supporting blog content.
Despite all of this, the page wouldn’t budge from position #4 in Google’s organic results. Naturally, we wanted to overcome this, and to push the page as high up the SERPs as possible.
So, we put on our investigator’s hats, seeking to find the root cause of this “ceiling”.
The Observation
While performing a manual Google search results check, we noticed a trend that every page ranking for the target search terms displayed a thumbnail image next to the listing.
We know from experience that improved click-through rates (CTR) can lead to higher rankings, especially when users consistently engage with a result. This was a great page we were working with, it simply wasn’t standing out visually.
A question then rose in our minds; What if we optimised the thumbnail image, in the same way you might optimise a Facebook sidebar ad or YouTube thumbnail?
What We Did
We analysed the top-ranking competitors and saw that they used real artwork of real products their users had created – not just photos of the products, but visually compelling mockups presented in lifestyle settings. More questions bubbled to the surface; If this was working for them, how might a similar tactic impact our client’s page?
We set to work, creating three high-quality images by applying our client’s artwork to 3D product mockup templates and placing them in realistic, textured backgrounds. These weren’t generic visuals, but vivid, professional, and contextually relevant.
Our images complete, we uploaded all three images to the service page, placing our preferred thumbnail image as the first image on the page, and setting that same image as the page thumbnail for internal linking elements.
Then, as is sometimes the case with SEO – we played the waiting game.
What Happened
Within 24 hours, Google updated the SERP to display our new image as the page thumbnail. The very next day, the page jumped from position #4 to #2. Over the following weeks, it climbed to position #1.
We’d achieved our goal – much to our client’s appreciation.
While it’s difficult to isolate click-through-rate metrics from the ranking jump, it was clear that the enhanced image had made a measurable difference. Whether it appealed more to users or aligned better with Google’s visual relevance model (or a combination of the two) it worked, and quickly.
Why It Worked
Much like a successful display ad, the image we used followed four key principles:
- Clean – uncluttered and easy to scan
- Clear – main subject is large and legible
- Colourful – visually striking and vibrant
- Contrasting – stands out from the plain SERP background
These principles don’t just make for attractive images – they make them effective, helping users notice, click, and stay. Even if your thumbnail doesn’t appear in the search results, the application of these principles can improve on-page engagement, which is another signal Google cares about.
How to Apply This to Your Site
No matter your industry, here’s what we recommend for image optimisation in 2025 and (at least for the time being) beyond:
- Use Real Images of Real People Doing Real Work
- Avoid Stock Photography
- Be Cautious with AI-Generated Faces
- Use Lifestyle or Contextual Product Imagery
- Prioritise Your Lead Image
- Place a strong img tag high in the content
- Use Open Graph tags (og:img) to define the preview image
- Add ImageObject schema markup for better context
- Optimise for Speed and Core Web Vitals
- WebP or AVIF formats for fast loading
- Lazy loading (loading=”lazy”) for all non-critical images
- Compression tools like TinyPNG or Squoosh
- Mobile-responsive image delivery with srcset and sizes
- Ensure Your Images Are Niche-Relevant
Authentic visuals build trust. Whether it’s your team in action, your product in use, or real outputs from your service, these images are unique and contextually relevant – two things Google values when evaluating image content. They also contribute to your EEAT signals (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).
Stock images are everywhere – and Google’s visual models can recognise them. Recycled visuals lower your page’s uniqueness, and often disengage users who’ve seen the same smiling model ten times elsewhere.
AI-generated images of people are often less believable and may reduce trust. Google can detect them, and users can too. However, for product or object imagery, AI visuals can be more acceptable – especially in industries where image quality has traditionally been lower.
Don’t just show your product – show it in use. Whether it’s a digital mockup or a real photo, lifestyle imagery provides helpful context that improves both Google’s understanding and user engagement.
Google often pulls the first image on your page to show as a thumbnail in search results. To improve your chances of controlling that:
Also, remember: your lead image might also be used by social media platforms when the page is shared. Make it count.
Image performance affects SEO just as much as content does. Use:
These improvements help reduce load time and improve Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – a key metric in Google’s Core Web Vitals.
It’s true that not all industries lend themselves to dynamic, exciting images. In these cases, we’ve seen that it’s a common pitfall to lean on generic imagery like forests and skylines to inject personality into a brand. While this may bring the perception of style to your site, when your website’s imagery doesn’t reflect what you actually offer, it can confuse both users and search engines. This disconnect can lead to lower engagement, ultimately damaging your organic search performance.
Final Thoughts
In our experience, we’ve seen that ranking success today depends not just on your words, but on the whole user experience – including the images you choose. With the right visuals, your content doesn’t just look better, it has the capacity to perform better, with images acting as trust signals, relevance indicators and conversion catalysts.
When chosen with intention and optimised with strategy, a picture can say a thousand words…and help you rank in Google. If your content is battling for the top spot, a simple shift in visuals might just be the edge you need to win.
