Adding photos to your Google Business Profile listing offers a great opportunity to improve your online visibility by increasing your reach and click-through rates. Photos are also a simple way to entice potential customers, and may be that final push to get them through your doors.

As advantageous as imagery is, it's crucial that you're following all best practices when uploading. Before getting into our guide, make sure that you've familiarized yourself with the types of photos you can upload and sizing requirements. While many of these guidelines are just considered best practice, and not mandatory, all ads and media assets need to comply with the Google Ads Policy.‍

Best Practices for GBP Photos

1) Upload high quality, engaging photos to best showcase your business
As obvious as this sounds, it bears repeating due to the number of brands that take this advice with a grain of salt. Photos help, but if the images aren't high quality or clear on your offerings, then long-term you won't be getting as much out of it as you could.

Keeping that mind, also consider that depending on your industry, the type of images you should focus on are going to differ; For instance, if you own a chain of jewelry stores, your photos should showcase the various display cases you have, highlighting your diverse selection of brands. Whereas if you own a chain of hardware stores, Google prefers exterior photos over all else.

2) Avoid stock images
Be careful not to stray too far into the corporate sector for images, as ones that come across as being too "stylized" or overly polished can be off-putting to the public. Try to instead mimic user-generated content (UGC), or in other words, toe the line of both professional and realistic imagery.

3) Optimize images for SEO
Make certain that you're not uploading photos with default or generic file names; You should always rename each image with the proper keywords before uploading it to Google. A large part of successful SEO is optimizing the information of images. That extra step of changing the image name from 'DSC9567' to 'Eggplant lasagna with white wine' can make a worlds of difference.

4) Add images regularly
You are constantly competing to stay at the top of the search results and it's no secret that Google favors business listings that're consistent with updates.

As time consuming of a process this might be, it's an imperative part of staying ahead. Once you've laid the groundwork for your photos, you only need to add a couple images every few weeks or so. There's always new customers searching and finding your business and you want to make sure that you're always providing them with new, recent information.

5) Review what's been added by the public
As great as UGC is, it doesn't always fall into the most on-brand bucket; A local listing can easily go from being a great representation of your business to a page flooded with unflattering or irrelevant images.

Unfortunately there isn't a direct way to remove images from GMB, the best way to begin the process of removal is to report it to Google in an attempt to appeal. If the image continues to remain up after that initial step, you can try submitting another request, as a different set of eyes could see it and approve its removal.

Interested in managing your photos for all GMB listings better? Email us at [email protected] to discuss how to manage brand and public photos better.

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