With a drastic increase in visual content like images, graphics and videos, SEO is not about optimizing written content anymore. You also need to optimize images and other media if you want your website to rank on top of the search engines. Images and visual content has opened many new avenues for SEO marketers and it has offered Best Images Optimization Tips them another area to optimize their webpages. People prefer visual content to plain text because it is much easier to consume and besides, it is fun. So, if you can optimize your images for SEO, you have a better chance of attracting more traffic.
Here are some image optimizations that you should keep in mind while doing SEO of your website.
Image Size Optimization
Image Size is the first thing that you need to keep in mind. You don’t want to upload images with big file size because that would compromise the loading speed of your website which is one of the website ranking factors declared by Google. But you also can’t sacrifice the image quality by uploading low-quality images.
So, you need to find a middle ground. The most commonly used image formats on the web are GIF, PNG and JPEG. It is recommended that you use PNG for images because it has reasonable compression rate plus it doesn’t affect the quality so much. JPEG is also good but you lose some details with this. The point is, you should always keep the image size close to the most commonly used standard. You can check out your competitor’s images for getting an idea.
Use Appropriate Image Name
The filename is one of the hidden and most overlooked yet one of the most important images ranking factors. Using relevant names with images help search engines find content relevant to those images. This is where you put your main keywords within the image title and also in the alt attribute of your images.
It is also advised that you use reverent title for the image. For example, if it is a city landscape then it should be named appropriately rather then something like imag007.jpg. You get the idea. The point, image and the image title relevancy is important if you want to rank well on the search engines.
Put Images on SEO Optimized Pages
If you have some already optimized webpages then it’d be better to pace images on those pages. These images would be more likely to get ranked and featured in Google’s featured snippets. You need to find out what pages are doing well in term of search engine rank i.e. which pages have reasonable page authority and then post your images on that page.
Along with page authority, domain authority also matters. If a page of your website is being ranked for quality content then try hosting some images on that page. This would drastically affect the rank of your website.
Use the Right Format
As we mentioned above, you need to use an appropriate format for your images. The formats that are most widely used are JPEG and PNG. JPEG offers high compression rates but it also the image quality. You might end up using some important details from your images. Besides, putting bad quality images on your webpage is probably not a good idea.
It is recommended that you use PNG format for your images. It has good compression rates and the immortal details and quality of your images is also preserved. In fact, this format is a standard used by over 90% if the websites.
Content Wrapping
Make sure that your content is wrapped around the images that you are uploading. But make sure that the content that you are wrapping around your images is relevant to the images on your webpage. For example, the content that you right just before the image like “Following is the image of an animal” and then put a picture of a computer mouse then this probably would not work. Content relevancy matters and Google uses that content to determine whether it should rank your image or not.
Using Stock Images
The question about whether you should use stock images on your website or not has been a topic of debate for a long time now. Some people argue that it’d negatively affect the rank of your website. But we have found that it is not the case.
There is no impact on your ranking by using stock images. But there is another thing that you should probably be aware of. And that is, stick images are mostly generic. Meaning, you can find many similar images on many other websites. Your website uses its uniqueness if you use too many of these stock images and we all know that search engines prefer uniqueness. So there is no copyright issues with using stock images but they also won’t give you a lot of benefits.
Image Popularity Drives More traffic
Unique, original and engaging images can drive a lot of traffic to your website. It is just like having engaging written content. If you have an image that is highly engaging then people would most likely share it and interact with it. What is happening here is your image is earning more and more links with each interaction and each share.
This could be a great source of traffic for your website. So the takeaway here is this, upload images that serve a purpose and that have a sense of uniqueness with them. Only then you can get a higher rank on search engines in terms of images optimization.
Final Words:
Trends in SEO have changed drastically over the years. You can’t just hope to attract more traffic to your website by simply optimizing your written content. You also need to optimize other visual aspects of your website like images if you want better results. The above Images optimization guide should help you through the process of image optimization for search engines. For more SEO news, updates and tips, stay tuned with SEO Magnifier!