When it comes to optimizing your website for SEO purposes, it’s easy to overlook one of the most important aspects: images. Images are not only visually pleasing, but can be used to connect visitors to your content and greatly boost SEO performance. To ensure that your images are making the most of your SEO efforts, follow our top tips on how to optimize your images for SEO best practices.
Table of Contents
- 1.Know The Basics of Image SEO
- 2.Harness the Power of Alt Text
- 3.Strategize Image File Names and Formats
- 4.Compress Your Images for Faster Speeds
- Q&A
1.Know The Basics of Image SEO
Getting Noticed Optimizing your images is a great way to increase engagement on your website and grow traffic to your page. Images are a necessary part of any digital marketing strategy. To get more out of your images, you need to understand the basics of image SEO.
Optimize Your Image File The file name is an important part of optimizing any image. To maximize your SEO value, the file name should accurately reflect the subject of your image. It should also include some relevant keywords. The image format should also match your needs. For web use, JPEG and PNG are the two best formats.
Alt & Title Text Adding alt and title text to your images is a must if you want to rank higher in search engines. The alt text should accurately describe the content of the image. The title text should contain more information, including any relevant keywords. Both of these will help search engines better understand the context of the image.
Image Size Matters Large, high-resolution images can slow down your site’s loading time. To ensure that your pages load quickly and remain SEO friendly, you should optimize the size of images. When optimizing for both SEO and speed, use a program to compress the image file size before uploading it.
- Optimize your image file name.
- Include alt and title descriptions.
- Optimize image size for a better user-experience.
By following these basic image SEO guidelines, you can increase the visibility of your website and make sure that your images work harder for you.
2.Harness the Power of Alt Text
We live in the digital world where visuals matter the most. According to a study done by eMarketer, articles with visuals will get 94% more views than those without. That’s why an image’s alt-text is an integral part of the content.
Alt text works as a sign language for search engines when it comes to images on your website. All images need to have an alt-text that includes information about the content of the image. If you don’t include an alt text, search engine spiders may have a hard time understanding the purpose of the image.
When choosing an alt text for your visuals, make sure it is meaningful and relevant to the subject. It should include keywords related to the content. Alt texts also help people using screen readers to understand the context of the visual elements on your page. However, make sure that it is written with respect to the page content and not just for search engine optimization.
You can taking advantage of this powerful SEO weapon in the following ways:
- Make sure the alt text describes the essential elements of the image.
- Keep the length under 125 characters, as longer alt texts will not be indexed by search engines.
- Try to include relevant keywords that will make your images more visible in search engine results.
- Make sure the alt text adds to the overall content of the page.
3.Strategize Image File Names and Formats
When starting to strategize image file formats, the first question you might ask is: which format should I use? To make it easier for you to decide, here is a quick overview of some of the most commonly used formats:
- JPEG – the most widely used format, it supports millions of colours and is small in size. Great for web-based images.
- PNG – the second most popular format, it’s bigger in file size and works better for complex images with gradients or transparencies.
- GIF – the best format for animation, this format can handle between 2 and 256 colours. Also prevents loss of quality.
- SVG – a vector-based image format, SVGs are usually at least 10 times smaller than pixels. Perfect for logos, icons and illustrations.
Once the format has been decided, it’s time to think about the image file name. This is especially important if you want to get your photos found via search engines. Every image should have an unique, keyword-rich file name. This means that if you’re trying to optimize an image of a beautiful beach sunset, the file name should include words like “beach”, “sunset”, “Pacific Coast” and similar.
It’s also important to make sure that each file name is brief but informative. For example, if you took a photo of a glacier reflecting the sky, a good idea would be “Glacier-Reflected-Sky.jpg”. Keep to hyphens when creating the file name, and avoid using more than four words.
Another interesting tip would be to use a consistent structure for every image you have on your website. This structure could include the name of the website, type of image and a unique identifier. For example, if this was an image from a blog post, the file name could look like “Blog_Hero_UniqueID.jpg”. This will make it easier to spot images on your website, reducing the chances of search engine crawlers missing out on them.
4.Compress Your Images for Faster Speeds
Making sure your image files are compressed properly can be one of the most powerful ways to help keep your website loading fast. Every time a user visits your website, the size of the images they download to view can significantly slow down the loading time.
Image compression refers to taking your image file size and reducing it until it is significantly smaller than the original size, while still looking and functioning as it should. There are many tools available online to help you compress your images as needed.
- Use compressed formats like JPEG-XR, WebP, PNG-8, or JPEG
- Use an image resizing tool to adjust the dimensions of the image
- Compress your images with special compression tools like TinyJPG or ImageOptim
- Don’t set your image size too large for the web
Keep in mind that compressing your images too much will reduce their quality, resulting in blurry images and poor user experience. When compressing images, always aim for a balance between file size and image quality. This balance will vary depending on the type of website you have, your hosting platform, and the speed of your website.
Q&A
Q: What is the most important factor to consider when optimizing images for SEO?
A: The most important factor to consider when optimizing images for SEO is to ensure that the image is relevant to the content, and that you use descriptive and relevant file names. This will help search engines understand the content of the image, and make sure that it is appropriately indexed.
You now have the tools to optimize your images for SEO, and you’re on your way to giving your website visitors a better, faster experience. Making these small optimizations can make a big difference for your website’s rankings and bottom line. Start optimizing your images for SEO, and enjoy the rewards.
