Image SEO: Best practices and tips for optimization
Without my label maker, I couldn’t imagine running our household. Initially, I bought a manual labeller that required me to squeeze the letters to emboss them. Each “clack clack clack” was very therapeutic. I had so much fun naming everything that I purchased a second battery-powered one.
I love labels because they help me find stuff quickly. What happened to the last electric bill? It’s in the bills folder. Where’s the calculator? There in the box labelled supplies. In our house, you’ll never lose anything.
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, works the same. For your content to be easily located in the boundless World Wide Web, SEO specialists tag all possible content with the right keywords that potential clients are most likely to use on search engines.
A search engine optimized website will show as one of the top sources, if not listed on the first page of the results. Aside from the text, images in your website can be optimized as well because people also search for images on the internet.
The power of image-based on-page SEO
When images are used correctly, they appear in search results, attract attention, and help tell your brand’s story. If you have an e-commerce site, using optimized imagery is critical to increasing product sales and can increase them several times over.
While Google cannot read images, it can pattern match them, index images based on their meta descriptions, and display them in image searches.
Here are some of the best practices and tips for optimization using image-based SEO.
1. Choose the right image format
There are different image formats such as PNG, JPEG, and SVG. How can you distinguish each format so it’s suitable to your needs?
PNG files have better quality images but they have a larger file size. JPEG images’ quality level can be adjusted so it can still produce quality images.
SVGs are a bit of a website design magic trick in that they not only generate crisp graphics at any scale, but they’re also optimized for search engines, programmable, often smaller than other formats, and capable of dynamic animations.
You can ask your Deer Designer to save the image to the file type that you need.
2. Create unique images
Choose an image that is related to the topic of your content. Or even better: ask your design team to create unique illustrations for you.
Aside from being topical, an original image has additional value in terms of SEO and branding since it is one-of-a-kind.
3. Rename the file
This is another thing that escapes people’s attention all too often. Using a descriptive file name helps search engines identify the image content and index it. “picture0001.jpg” is a lost opportunity.
Briefly describe the picture when you rename the file to help Google index it. Good examples are “gourmet dog food.jpg” or “used car tires.png”.
4. Use Alt text
In Image SEO, Alt text is essential to increase its visibility and ranking.
Alt text, often known as alt tags, should explain the picture to search engines and visitors who use a screen reader. This tag should be more detailed than the file name, while still including important keywords.
One of the most significant purposes for alt tags is to offer a visual for the visually impaired who are unable to determine what the picture is for.
In addition, Google places great weight on alt tags not just to discern what is on the picture, but also to discover the topic of the material around it.
Make your designs work twice as hard
Well-thought-out designs can serve multiple purposes. It may keep your customers interested and informed while also directing additional traffic to your website.
Leave the designs to us. The tips and techniques you can do on the back end in regards to image SEO are small tweaks that your content manager can implement. They are simple, easy to execute, and can pay off in the long run.
