How to Optimize Images for SEO?

 

Have you ever wondered how Google decides which image should rank higher? Well, the secret behind it can be to optimize the image for SEO.

You can miss out on sales, traffic, and user engagement if your image optimization is not up to the mark. Before deciding which website to rank on a specific search query, Google has to look at more than 200 factors.

A well-optimized image can help you stand out from the crowd of different sites that have not optimized their image.

The good news is that image optimization is not so complicated project. In your current image process, only a few changes can help your website gain more leads and traffic which will help you in making more sales. Let’s discuss some important aspects of image optimization.

Importance of Image Optimization

A well-optimized image works well in getting more visibility in Google which is the secret of getting more traffic. This is why websites optimize images. Besides this, some other benefits of image optimization can be:

Improves the user experience

If you have optimized your images well, they will display correctly which is important to improve UX. This makes your website easier to navigate. For example, using large-size images can hide the screen or it can cover other important things on the page.

Makes the Site Speed Faster

Speed matters a lot when it comes to SEO. Your site can be slowed down if the size of your image is very large or if you have not formatted it in the correct way. This will result in killing your rankings and annoying site visitors.

Makes your Site more Reachable

Some steps of optimization, such as, alt tags can make the navigation of your website easier which is very beneficial for those who use screen readers. Web accessibility is beneficial for site visitors as well as for SEO.

Image Optimization Best Practices

Do you want to know what are the most important factors to make sure that your images are findable and don’t make the speed of your site slow?

Here are some important tips to optimize your images:

·         Image size optimization

·         Image file name optimization

·         Use alt tags

·         Make mobile-friendly Images

·         Image title Optimization

·         Include captions

·         Use unique images

·         Make sure the text complements the image

·         Add image structured data

·         Use site maps

Let’s explore them one by one:

1       Image Size Optimization

File size and image size are two different things. Image size shows its dimension; for example, 1024 pixels by 680 pixels. On the other hand, file size refers to the storage space, such as 350 kilobytes.

Due to larger dimensions and high resolution of images, your page load times may slow down greatly. For printed materials, they are the best option but they should be scaled down and resized for the web.

Each of the formats of images like GIF, PNG, and JPEG have their own advantages. If you are using images with lots of colors, JPEG is recommended. On the other hand, PNG is best for simple ones.

When an image is compressed well, it affects its size as well as quality greatly. If you keep the file small, the quality of the image will be worse. You can check different compression rates and file types and see which is perfect for your image.

There is an option of save-for-the-web in many image editing tools that are available online such as Adobe Photoshop. These tools minimize the size of the file automatically; thus, the image quality is optimized.

Tools and Plug-ins for Image Size Optimization:

Besides Photoshop, you can get help from numerous other tools and plug-ins. Some of them are mentioned here:

#Image Optimization Tools

·         Trimage

·         Pixlr (JPEG Optimization)

·         Kraken (Bulk Compression)

·         ImageOptim (Mac Only)

·         FileOptimizer

·         OptiPNG

·         Photopea

·         JPEG Mini

·         Gimp

·         Affinity Photo

#WordPress Plug-ins for Image Optimization

·         Yoast SEO

·         TinyPNG

·         Optimus Image Optimizer

·         EWWW Image Optimizer

·         WP Smush

·         ShortPixel

·         ImageRecycle

#Test Speed

After optimizing images, you must test the website page loading times to know that it is quick enough. Many tools are used for checking the speed of the page. Some of them are as follows:

·         WebWait

·         Pingdom

·         GTmetrix

·         WebPage Test

·         Google PageSpeed Insights

2       Image File Name Optimization

You must use descriptive and relevant keywords in the file name of the image to make its SEO most powerful. At the start of the name, it is good practice to use target keywords. Furthermore, hyphens can be used to separate them.

Keep in mind that search engines don’t identify underscores so avoid using it. If you use them your words will not be visible individually.

Furthermore, the names of the files should make sense for humans as well as for search engines. For example, let's consider an image file for a blog post about on-page SEO techniques. The original image file name is seo-image789.jpg.

To optimize it for both humans and search engines, you can rename the file to something more descriptive and relevant, such as on-page-seo-techniques.jpg.

3       Use Alt Tags

An image might be understandable by humans but search engines require clues for this purpose. Search engines are not able to index your image content in a correct way if it is without alternative text.

A good alt tag is useful for users who are visually impaired. Besides this, it also provides context. Furthermore, if any glitch occurs and the page is unable to upload, a good alt tag is really helpful in such a situation because to rank the page, a search engine reads the alternative text.

An alt tag should be written in a more detailed way as compared to a file name. To boost visibility, you can use the terms that are relevant to the brand in the alt tags but avoid keyword stuffing.

4       Make Mobile Friendly Images

Search engines mainly focus on the mobile version of a site because the algorithm of Google uses mobile-first indexing. There, you should pay attention to making your images mobile-friendly. This is possible if you make sure that your site layout and images are quick to respond to the viewing device.

There are numerous builders and templates for websites that change the size of an image automatically. In such cases, you have to specify the image size according to the width of the device. For this purpose, you must attach a bit of custom CSS code to your website.

5       Image Title Optimization

When you are building a website on WordPress, it usually automatically takes the title from its file name. If the title is not descriptive and doesn’t explain the image or you are not using WordPress, you must change it with suitable keywords as you do with the file name.

Although image titles are not so important for SEO they can add more context to the alt text. In terms of user engagement, image titles are more useful. Therefore, it’s a good practice to provide a short Call-to-Action like Download Now or Buy Today.

6       Include Captions

The words that are written directly under the images are called image captions. They may not affect the SEO directly. However, unlike alt text and file names, they are visible and can help in ranking the website.

The addition of captions can impact SEO indirectly. This way, engagement matrices, and user experience can be improved.

7       Use Unique Images

Although you can use stock photos on your websites but is not sure that they will help in rankings because other sites probably use the same picture. As distinctive written content is helpful in ranking the website, the same way, a unique image assists in better SEO.

8         Make Sure the Text Complements the Image

The page text can assist search engines in defining the relevancy of your photos. Thus, add more description if there is not enough information in the text to describe the image completely.

9       Add Image Structured Data

If you put structured data on the pages of your website, your images will come as rich results by the search engines. Google images have the quality to support structured data for recipes, product images, and videos. For instance, if it knows image text, it puts a badge on it and accompanies it.

10     Use Site Maps

Google keeps the site map of your website which is like a file that contains a list of its web pages. It informs the search engines about the map of your site’s content. This is why, they are an essential part of SEO.

If you want to make sure that all the search engines notice all your images like thumbnails, photos, infographics, videos, memes, etc, you must add them to your site map.

You must include all the relevant information in each image, such as license info, URL location, title, caption, and description. Similarly, add relevant facts to each video such as raw video file URL, URL location, title, thumbnail URL, and description.

FAQs – Frequently Asked Questions

Which format of image is best for SEO?

Usually, JPEGs are the most perfect for SEO.

Can I improve my SEO by adding images?

You can make your content more interesting and appealing by adding images to it. It increases user engagement and helps in ranking the website.

What is the procedure for tagging images for SEO?

To achieve the maximum SEO benefits, tagging it manually is more beneficial. Select the phrase that describes the image and it should be similar to the primary keyword of the page.

Conclusion

Hence, before you upload any image to your website, keep in mind all the image optimization strategies given above.

The most essential tip is to keep the alt text and image relevant to the page. Besides this, important takeaways are:

Choose the proper format of the file. For screenshots, the most recommended ones are PNGs.For faster page load speed, decrease the size of the file.