Image Optimization For SEO: Top 7 Tips For Image Optimization
Image Optimization For SEO: Images play a vital role in improving the quality and ‘look’ of your content. Yes, the look of your content matters. Just like a book with colorful pictures makes it more interesting to the readers, online content, more specifically blogs, with images too are more appealing and interactive. Having just textual content makes the blog boring and monotonous.
Even if the quality of your content is superb, people won’t go through it if it doesn’t look appealing at first glance. This is where images come to the scene. If you ask whether or not to add images to your content, the answer is, without any doubt, a yes. Especially with people’s attention span decreasing, adding images is a must if you want people to read your content. Even researches have shown that 40 percent people respond better to visual information than just textual content.
In addition to making the content appealing and interesting, images also play a role in SEO, thereby, improving the rank of your blog.
Top 7 Tips For Image Optimization For SEO
Now that it has been established that to make your blog a success, you need to add images, we need to move onto the next step – how to do image optimization for SEO.
Yes, adding images is not enough, you need to optimize them as well so that search engines can read them. Image optimization is one of the most important aspects of On-Page SEO. So, let’s look into some of the tips for image optimization for SEO:
1. Use Relevant Images
It is needless to say that the images should go with the content. If you are writing about smart phones but you insert images of laptops, it’s not going to make sense to the readers. It also depends on the context.
For example, if there is too much numbers in your content, it will be good to use graphs and pie charts, etc. If you are explaining some complex topics, using infographics can help.
The idea is to have relevant images that makes the page appealing and its content easily understandable. Image relevancy also means putting the right images with the right block of content. If you are writing about a particular feature of your product in one paragraph, use the related image along with it, not after three paragraphs where you are dealing with an entirely different feature.
2. Use Keyword-rich File Names
Yes, file names of the images are important too. Search engines can read the name of the file uploaded and if you use a default file name, it won’t make sense to the search engines and they won’t find it relevant. So, if your primary keyword is “Image Optimization for SEO”, save the related image with a file name that includes that keyword, with each word separated by hypen. I would also recommend you use the name of your blog or brand at the end. Like in case of “Image Optimization for SEO”, the file name can be kept as “image-optimization-for-seo-blogsperia”.
3. Optimize Alt Tag
Alt Tag or Alternate Tag is the most important thing about image optimization. Search engines are not capable of reading images or pictures. They consider the location of images (in the body of the content) as blank spaces which are not good from the SEO point of view.
This is where Alt Tag comes to the picture. Alt Tag serves two purposes:
a. It tells the search engines that the location is not blank – there is an image,
b. It describes what the image is about.
Alt Tag also serves a third purpose – when the image doesn’t load or cannot be shown, the Alt Tag is shown instead. Keep the Alt Tag short, keyword friendly and yet descriptive.
4. Compress Your Images
Loading time is a ranking factor. Images which are of large size take more time to load. This can make users hit the ‘Back’ button which, in turn, will harm the ranking.
It is, therefore, recommended that you compress your images before uploading them. I would suggest you keep them below 100 kb.
5. Choose The Right Image Format
Yes, image format too is important. The three most popular image formats – PNG, JPG and GIF have certain advantages and disadvantages. Use the format that serves your purpose the most.
a. JPG images retain their quality to a great extent even after compressing them.
b. GIF is suitable for simple images with less color. They are not good for larger images.
c. PNG images support more colors and they do not degrade due to re-saves. However, compared to JPG images, they have larger file size.
6. Link Your Images
People have a tendency to click on images. By default, images when clicked open the media file (link to the uploaded image) which is of no use. So, link your images to another post (which is relevant) or your product page.
7. Add Title Tag
Title tag is, basically, a title for the image you uploaded. It is displayed when you hover your mouse over the image. It is to be noted that the Title Tag is not same as the Title of the image which appears when you upload the image.
The option to add the Title Tag appears when you select the image from the post editor (after uploading the image). A new screen will appear. Under the Advanced Options, there will be a field named Image Title Attribute. This is the place to enter the Title Tag.
These are the basic things that you should do for image optimization for SEO. Remember, although many websites use images with their content, not everyone optimizes the images. So, image optimization for SEO will definitely give you an edge over others.
I hope this article on image optimization for SEO helps you. If you have any question, drop your comment below and I will get back to you at the earliest.
