Images are a natural part of the internet and should be a natural part of your SEO Like any other piece of content, images can be great or bad for SEO. Images and other similar formats of creative content have a huge impact on how well your website performs.
As with most things in SEO, two crucial factors play a role in SEO image optimization – speed and context.
On the one hand, we are trying to optimize the speed at which users see the images we present on our website.
On the other hand, we also try to provide Google with as much context as possible to help it understand, classify and rank our images accordingly in the search results.
In SEO, image optimization is the practice of increasing search rankings and visibility by making images easier for search engines to process, understand, and access. Image SEO includes optimizing the dimensions, file sizes, formats, file names, and alternative text attributes of images on a website.
To give your pages the appropriate rankings, Google evaluates all your content, including your images. Generally, all elements related to image search should work well together. They should provide context for what is shown in the image, its purpose, and what kind of search queries Google should show that image for.
Sound confusing? Don't worry, because now we'll take a close look at the factors that influence your SEO images. We'll also examine exactly how you can optimize images so that they contribute to your overall SEO efforts.
As a quick refresher: Alt text is written text that describes an image.
Image captions are generally not required if the context of the page can help the reader understand what the attribute image represents.
However, if you have a visually intensive website, consider using captions to help readers understand a CMS image in context.
Use your judgment when it comes to adding captions, but if you think it can help readers (and bots) better understand an image, it can be a worthwhile addition to a page.
Image compression is an essential part of any good website optimization strategy.
It helps your web pages load faster, which provides a better user experience and also helps improve your website's search engine rankings.
To effectively compress your images, try a tool like:
Generally, less than 100 KB is ideal in terms of a good file size.
However, it's important to note that Google doesn't consider every single image size. Instead, it considers the overall size of the page.
So, if you have a small image where the quality differences are less significant, you can try compressing it to 30-50 KB. This gives you extra space to keep another image 30 KB larger, especially if that image loses quality after compression.
Ultimately, Google (and its readers) prioritizes original content. This means that if you want your images to appear on the image results pages, it's important to use original and unique images.
This is especially important if you work for an e-commerce website and publish visuals of your products. Many customers use images to search for consumer goods. In fact, 50% of online shoppers say that images have helped them decide to make a purchase.
If your image doesn't accurately represent your product, it will be buried under better, higher-quality images from competitors.
Consider the use of products such as Canva, to design the online shop internally, for example with infographics, graphics or animated images that highlight your brand on the search results pages and make your images easier to share.
The filename of your image file can affect how easily search engine crawlers can interpret your image. Therefore, it is helpful to rename the file before uploading it to your website.
Instead of a generic name like "IMG_0886", use relevant keywords to describe what's in the image, similar to your alt text. This will also ensure your image appears in Google Image Search results, increasing traffic to your website.
Responsive images are crucial to ensure your audience can view your images on any device. These days, it's essential that your pages are optimized for mobile devices to improve search engine rankings and user experience.
If your images are not flexible, the page will not display as cleanly on mobile devices as on desktops, which negatively impacts SEO as well as the readership's perception of your brand.
Fortunately, some website hosting services, including HubSpot, automatically ensure that your images are responsive.
However, if necessary, you can make your images more flexible by using fast code.
For example, you can add this code to your HTML:
Or add this code to your CSS:
.responsive {
width: 100%;
height: car;
}
Creating high-quality, unique, and original images is not only great for your own website – it's also a fantastic way to earn backlinks when other websites use your images for their own pages.
If you create high-quality images, other companies may want to feature those images on their own websites – with links back to your company.
Ultimately, this means that images can have a direct impact on the amount of traffic, leads, and customers you receive through your marketing efforts.
Google recommends adding images to an existing sitemap or creating a separate sitemap just for images to help search engines discover your images. This is especially helpful for images that Google can't find through crawling, such as those accessed via JavaScript forms.
Hopefully, you can use these best practices to improve and attract new visitors through image search results. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words! So, imagine the value of an SEO-optimized image.
To accurately find and check images for SEO, you need to use a website crawler that works similarly to Google's web crawler. Website health tools find and show you problems and potential areas for optimization on your website, so you can improve your organic search rankings and visibility.
These tools will show you:
Therefore, you can see and quickly fix all website problems related to image SEO.
We've given you seven easy-to-implement measures for the SEO images on your website. Keep in mind that you don't have to implement all of them, but you should definitely try to implement as many tips as possible, depending on your available time and knowledge.
For example, if you are uncomfortable with hardcoding Open Graph tags, you could start by adding SEO-friendly alt tags or using a free tool for effective image compression.
Decide what is most important and feasible for your strategy and start from there!
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