How to Professionally Optimize Website Images for SEO

Image SEO is a frequently ignored yet effective on-page SEO strategy.

Learn what you might be losing out on if you aren’t optimising your photos, and how to produce SEO-friendly images for your pages and posts.

What is Image SEO?

Image SEO is the process of optimizing graphics on a website to make it more appealing to search engine crawlers. Image SEO gives search engines more information about a visual, which helps them interpret the content and can lead to a rise in search rankings and visibility. It may also result in an image appearing in Google’s image search.

In the last year, image search has grown in popularity. Google eliminated the “see picture” button from their image search results in February 2018, causing more users to visit the website to view the image.

With this minor tweak, websites began to see an increase in traffic from picture searches. The number of site visits increased by 37% on several pages.

Picture SEO can increase traffic to your site and help your pages rank in image searches. So, how can you optimize your graphics and name images for SEO?

8 Image SEO Best Practices

To discover how to add SEO-friendly photos to your website, follow these instructions.

1) Add at least one image

Always add at least one picture or graphic on a page as a best practice for SEO. An image indicates to search engines that the page is valuable and entertaining, and so will be useful to searchers. Furthermore, visuals aid readers by making text easier to scan and absorb.

2) Use high-quality images

High-quality images will be more engaging and appealing to your readers. Create bespoke graphics that are unique to your pages if feasible. This will assist you in standing out in image searches.

Remember that more users are clicking through photos found in searches to view the image on the webpage. As a result, producing SEO content with unique, optimized photos may result in increased website traffic to your site.

If you are unable to generate new graphics, add visuals that do not resemble stock photos that have been replicated on dozens of websites. To avoid copyright infringement, only use photographs that you have purchased and/or have permission to use.

3) Choose the best file type

Image file types can have an impact on how a graphic loads or displays on a webpage. Choose the optimum file type for the intended use when adding a graphic.

Primarily employ:

• JPG images for photos
• Most custom graphics, pictures, and logos should be saved as PNG files (PNG files have a transparent background.)
• SVG is used for custom graphics or logos that will be displayed in a variety of sizes. (SVG files may be scaled to various sizes without losing quality.)
• GIFs are used to represent animated or moving visuals.

4) Use appropriate image file sizes

Large images might slow down page load times. Slow load times result in poor user experiences and long-term SEO outcomes. As a result, utilize picture SEO best practices for scaling. Before uploading huge files to your site, resize picture files (not simply the display image size) to the required display size and compress them.

5) Add and optimize the image alt tag

Are picture alt tags beneficial to SEO? Yes, the answer is yes. Although search crawlers can read and understand text, they cannot see images. Alt tags, also known as “alt attributes” and “alt descriptions,” assist them in processing a picture without viewing it by informing the search engine about the visual.

Image alt tags, in addition to assisting with SEO, also assist internet users. Some users have their picture displays turned off, their browsers are unable to load images due to a poor internet connection, or they use a screen reader due to visual impairment. In these instances, the image alt tag informs the viewer about the visual. As a result, adding picture alt tags can benefit both users and search crawlers.

How to Write SEO-Friendly Alt Text for Your Images

• Include the goal term for the page in at least one picture alt tag.
• Keep your alt text as brief as possible.
• Separate the alt text for each image on your page.
• Create alt text for your readers, not simply search crawlers.

6) Add the target keyword to the image title

Another method for creating SEO-friendly photos is to include the target term in the image title. Another tag that identifies and explains the visual is the picture title. Although it is not as important as the alt tag, it is nonetheless relevant and should be used. Use the same phrase for your image alt tag and image title for image SEO best practices.

7) Add the target keyword to the image file name

Another tag or label associated with an image is the file name. This is the name of an image file that has been uploaded to a website. To aid in keyword optimization, this label should also include the page’s target term and match the format of the image alt tag.

8) Add image-structured data

Structured data, often known as schema markup, is another technique to provide backend details to a picture that will aid search engines in understanding it. Structured data also increases the likelihood that a picture will appear as a rich result in SERPs, therefore include it with key photos.

Check out this page for instructions on how to add structured data to your images: Schema Markup 101: How to Get Rich Results and Improve Your SEO

Optimize Your Image SEO and Improve Search Performance

Image SEO is only one component of on-page SEO. For optimal effectiveness, image SEO, keyword optimization, and other SEO copywriting best practices must all work together.

Use On-Page SEO Checker to see if a page is fully optimized. It examines image SEO aspects such as alt-tags and filenames, as well as other on-page SEO changes that might help you boost the SEO of a website.

You can use an on-page SEO checklist as you write to verify your pages include all of the necessary features.

Once you’re certain that your on-page and image SEO is in good form, consider the big picture of SEO. To gain the best search results, ensure that your site is optimized for all other sorts of SEO. Use Site Audit and other SEO tools to check your pages adhere to on-page, off-page, and technical SEO best practices.

Begin optimizing your website right away. Sign up for a free trial of Advanced Plan to perform a comprehensive on-page and technical SEO audit on your content.