Featured images, also known as thumbnails, come in many forms. Infographics, photos, digital art, and even videos can all serve as the visual representatives of a blog post, article, guide, or other content. They play a vital role as a viewer’s first impression of a site and often determine whether someone clicks or scrolls past.
Getting them right is a must, but the question is: Which thumbnail type performs the best? What kind of featured image actually gets clicks? This article, using both second-hand research and data acquired from a poll, will answer just that.
Videos and Multimedia Options Are the Best Types of Featured Images
Nothing catches the eye quite like something in motion, and because of that, videos and other multimedia options like GIFs have historically made for the best thumbnails.
A recent LinkedIn Poll asked content marketers a simple question: What kind of images have historically performed the best for you or your company in search engines? Of the six participants, 83% said that videos and other multimedia were their highest-performing image types. Pure graphic design or digital art ranked second. That overwhelming majority reinforces how powerful motion-based visuals are. The simple fact is that still images, while functional, are not the most effective strategy for drawing organic traffic.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you can insert any video or GIF as a featured image and expect results. The type of image is only half the battle; the coding framework of the thumbnail and how well it fits within the site’s layout are what make a webpage visible and attractive to people and search engines alike.
How to Format a Thumbnail for SEO
Formatting is what allows Google to properly index your image (and whatever webpage it’s attached to) and determines exactly how viewers will see your thumbnail. Getting the size and code layout right is crucial to producing a high-impact featured image.
Once you have your thumbnail of choice, look at the layout of the platform where it will appear, whether that be YouTube, Instagram, your company website, etc. Optimize it to fit into the layout; this allows digital passersby to see your entire image. For instance, if you plan to create a LinkedIn post, it is recommended that the image attached to it be 1200 x 627 pixels. As this provides the best combination of size and image quality, you’ll want to adjust your thumbnail to meet these dimensions. Researching optimal sizing is a must.
Additionally, there are optimal ways to embed thumbnails into a website’s coding. Be sure your picture or video is embedded into a webpage through HTML or SRC elements, as Google prioritizes these directly embedded, crawlable images. CSS and other methods are functional, but they typically won’t increase the ranking potential of your webpage.
The key is to use correctly sized, HTML or SRC-embedded thumbnails. By doing these simple formatting tricks, you can make any thumbnail more visually appealing and impactful in search engines.
So, what kind of featured image really drives the most traffic, and offers the strongest SEO performance, on a webpage?
A multimedia thumbnail, whether it be a video or GIF, that’s optimized for a site’s layout and is embedded through HTML or SRC. This kind of image will yield content marketers the most traffic. It’s crawlable, it’s visually appealing, and most importantly, it attracts attention. The motion of a video or GIF draws attention from humans, while HTML or SRC embedding pleases Google’s current algorithm.
To quickly summarize,
Featured Image Best Practices
Use a motion-based thumbnail (video or GIF)
Size the image to match the platform’s ideal dimensions
Embed your image correctly using HTML or SRC elements
Luke Princeton Nazaire 