I’ll let you into a little secret.

If you’re super-duper into local SEO, and you’re not already attending LocalU Advanced you’re missing a trick. This is where the top minds and actual practitioners in the space get together and share ALL-NEW content including research, case studies, how-tos, and much, much more.

I got the chance to attend the last event on August 31, and, as always, I bloody loved it. So much that I wrote up the key takeaways from my favorite talks from Joy Hawkins, Rachel Anderson, Greg Gifford, Dana DiTomaso so that you can enjoy them too!

Joy Hawkins: Make Your Images Worth a Thousand Words

Ah, I do love Sterling Sky’s Joy Hawkins, I always get some great takeaways any time I listen to her speak, and using images more effectively is something I’m always looking to upskill on!

Joy starts by summing up three objectives for having great images:

1. Look better
2. Rank better
3. Get more leads

Let’s start with ‘Look better’

Marketers often forget to check how images are showing in mobile SERPs:

This doesn’t show for all queries—and not many people talk about these and how to get them. For the best photos on mobile: 

1. Make sure with the images your head isn’t chopped off
2. Don’t use a ton of text on the image
3. Don’t use stock photos
4. Use it to highlight awards or coupons, for example:

5. Make sure the image is a square
6. Size doesn’t appear to matter
7. Make the image appear high up in the HTML of the page to have a better…