Image SEO is essential in your battle to draw more traffic to your website.
If you optimise your use of images, you can rank higher on Google Images and reach more people.
Another benefit of using images is to improve the accessibility of your site by adding ALT text.
This post will explore some ways to improve your SEO with images.
Why should I use images?
With just under a quarter of all searches being Google Image searches, you can see that using images is an essential tool to reach a wider audience.
Images also form a significant part of your on-page SEO, as Google often shows images in the search results above other types of results.
Images also improve the quality of your content by breaking up your text and helping your readers determine the whole meaning of your content.
Ways to Optimise your Image SEO
1. Use Alt Text
Alt Text is short for alternative text. It is a brief description attached to every image.
Its primary purpose is to improve accessibility for visually impaired visitors or offer an explanation if the image cannot load.
Alt text improves SEO by providing additional relevance that Google can interpret when ranking your page.
For the best results, you should keep your description to around 125 characters, as this is the limit given by assistive technology.
You can also include keywords in your description but take care not to spam as Google will spot keyword stuffing. It is preferable to use a natural description with the addition of the brand if relevant.
2. Use Descriptive Names
When you create or save an image, it will be given a generic numbered file name. Google suggests you rename image files to reflect their content with hyphens, not underscores, to separate words.
e.g. white-upvc-double-glazed-window.jpg
3. Reduce Image Size
One potential issue with images is that a large file can slow down your page, affecting your UX.
You will notice that photos taken on your mobile are often 4032 x 3024 pixels, but a website may only have a width of 600 pixels.
You can resize images manually or use a plugin like Resize Image After Upload on WordPress.
An alternative to reducing your image sizes is to compress the file. Compression will retain the quality of the picture while decreasing page load time.
There are many dedicated tools available to compress your images for uploading.
4. Select an optimum Format
You can choose from various file types to save your photos and images, each with different benefits.
- JPEG: Easily compressed for email and is the most used picture format.
- PNG: Works well with background removal tools.
- WebP: Incompatible with older browsers but great for high compression and will work with animations.
- SVG: Perfect for small icons and logos.
5. Create an Image Sitemap
An image sitemap will improve your probability of appearing in SERPS.
An image sitemap only contains the URLs to the images on your site. It helps Google to find your pictures to include in search results.
Google has instructions on creating an image sitemap with up to 1000 images per page.
6. Consider using a Content Delivery Network
A content Delivery Network uses servers in different locations to enable faster uploads depending on where your site is being accessed.
You can use a plugin or follow a guide from your provider.
7. Lazy Loading
Since images load slowly, it is possible to use lazy loading to tell your browser to only load an image when needed.
It is possible to use this on images below the page cut-off so that images will only load if the visitor scrolls down.
Never use it on images above the cut-off, as it will spoil your UX.
8. Caching
Caching occurs when files get stored by your visitors’ browsers so the features will load quicker on their next visit.
For websites with a high percentage of returning visitors, this can dramatically improve your page load speeds for users.
You can use a cache plugin or follow Google guidelines.
9. Structured Data
Structured data assists search engines with understanding your site information.
Providing that you ensure an image is relevant to the page, structured data can improve your image search listing.
Your image URLs should be easily crawlable for indexing so Google can find and rank them.
10. Optimise for Social Media
You can choose how your social media posts will look in a preview, including the title and image.
When sharing posts, you want the preview to include the best image to reflect the content alongside the title. You can use Opengraph tags to do this effectively.
If you want some support with your SEO rankings, get in touch with us at SEO & Web. We deliver a natural, organic marketing edge to help you rank higher in search results and beat your competition online.
