Image SEO : Image Optimization Tips You Need to Know

We undergo a survey on how the images are uploaded to their blog posts or a website in a normal way. More than 70 % of bloggers and internet users answer is they are downloading the image from the free stock photos site, upload it to the backend of their website, and then inserted into their page wherever they need it. The reason is they are not aware of image SEO.

Do you think this is the right way of uploading an image to your website? If yes, then change your mindset. This is not the right way of adding an image to your website. The reason is if you are adding an image directly to your website, then it is like adding extra weight to your website that will slow down your page speed. And the other hand, search engines like Google can’t read your images without proper alt text.

Optimizing images for your website is worth the time. Because the webpage with the well-optimized image will rank #1 in Google Images within few hours of uploading. The Image optimizing tricks are like adding alt tags, compressing large images, and other image SEO tips.

Optimizing an Image has many advantages like, gives a better user experience, increase page speed and rankings. Let’s change the way of uploading an image!!

Here are the top 7 image optimization tips you need to know.

1. Choose the right image format

The image format is like your First name. choose the best image file extension to save your image. Before uploading an image to your site, make you’re your file is saved in the right image format. While there are so many image formats available on the web but, PNG and JPEG are the best.

PNG File: Gives better image quality, but the larger file size

JPEG File: Here you can adjust the size of the image file without losing the quality of an image.

The most preferred image file format is JPEG, images in Jpeg file formats are looks like a real image.

2. Use compressed Images

Uploading images without compressing its file looks larger and it takes more time to load. Also, the search engine considers your webpage with the non-compressed image as a big size. More than half the size of the total webpage is used by an image file. That’s why we recommend using compressed images for your web page.

Use photoshop or another tool to compress your image before uploading it to your WordPress website.

There is a WordPress plugin available for compressing the image like WP Smush, which reduces the image file without reducing its quality.

Whenever using a plugin, make sure the image compression takes place outside the servers, so that will not affect the loading time of our website.

Also, adding compressed images will help to load your image faster on mobile devices.

3. Create Unique Images

If you want to see your images on top-on-top rankings, then you need to do the necessary things for that. Instead of adding the same image from the stock photos, add some unique and original images to stand out from other sites. Stock photos have the same generic photos, that may be used by your competitor’s site.

For a better user experience, and ranking uses the original and unique images on your webpage.

4. Aware of Copyright

Always, be sure the image file you have chosen to use from the free stock image gallery has no copyright issues. Some of the stock photos like DepositFiles, Shutterstock, canva own an image that you have used. If you don’t have a license or access to use such photos, try to avoid adding such photos to your website to avoid the risk of penalty.

5. Add proper Alt tags

Alt tags are like addresses for the image file. The search engine crawlers do not crawl the image which does not have alt text. Alt-text is considered as the file name of the images. Giving more attention to the alt tags adds more benefits to the On-Page SEO strategy.

Adding appropriate alt texts associated with the keywords improves page ranking

Final Words

Still, if you do not believe in how image files are affecting your website page speed, we recommend using Google’s page speed Insight tool to check the loading time of your page having an image without optimization and compare it after adding the optimized images to your site.

How to optimize image for Search Engines?

Image optimization is the heart of the On-Page SEO which plays a major role in creating a successful SEO campaign. Nowadays achieving a good ranking become more complicated due to the latest Google algorithm updates.

Nowadays search engines not only looking for quality content to rank an article on the top, but the rankings also depend on so many factors. But the evergreen factor is doing on-page optimization. Image optimization also comes under On-page optimization, a single well-optimized image is equal to hundred words.

A well-optimized image is a pillar for a standard webpage

The wrong usage of images will destroy the overall impression of your webpage and a good image brings more sources of traffic from search engines.

The basic image optimization includes giving a proper alt tag, image title, image size, and image links.

Top 10 Image Optimization Techniques

1. Adding a relevant image to your content

Adding a relevant image is more important when it comes to image optimization.

Only a relevant image will give sense to your webpage and it helps for ranking your site. Online users retrieve more information from the images than lengthy phrases. The images in your content become memorable and sharable. So add attractive and quality images to your content. You can pick images from the sites like Pixabay or Pexels. Here you can get more Royalty-free images for your website.

2. Adding Alt Tag to the images

Adding an Alt tag or alternative text to the image is important while doing image optimization. The search engines are text-based and they do not know how to read the images. So, adding an Alt tag tells the search engine, where the image is placed, and it helps to understand your images. The images without Alt text appear as a blank space in crawling and the empty spaces bring a negative impact on your SEO.

Keep your Alt tags short and informative. If you pick the images from the open-source, then do not forget to rename them. Some plugins take the image name as alt tags. So, before uploading an image, give proper alt tags and image names.

How to add Alt tags for an Image in WordPress?

While uploading an image, you can see the option to add the alt tag, or simply you can add the alt text on the right side of the image as we have shown in a screenshot

Fill in the alt text description using a ranking keyword and relevant phrases. For example, if you adding an image for the “how to make money online for beginners? Blog then your alt tag would be like “make money online”

3. Image Size

Image size is an important factor in SEO. The website loading time also depends on the size of the images. If you add any larger image, then it will slow down the webpage and makes more time for loading. To reduce the loading time, choose an image having a minimum size or else compress the image before you are uploading.

Also, go of the .jpg image
Always compress your image before adding it to your webpage. You can also use any one of the WordPress image compression plugins. Example: Shortpixel plugin. With the help of this plugin, you can also compress the size of the image which you already uploaded. By using this compression plugin you can easily convert your .png image to a .jpeg image.
Use CDN Network for your website, which automatically speeds up your webpage for better performance.

4. Use SEO-Friendly Filename

You already know the importance of adding a keyword in the URL, it also applies to images. Keyword-rich image files help the crawling bots to determine it easily. The image with a file name like “DSC0918.jpg” does not give any information about the image. Adding a keyword-related filename separated by a hyphen gives more chances for your images for ranking. Example “how-to-create-a-blog”.

5. Add Title Tag and Image Linking

Images are perfect for linking. Image linking gives better results on On-Page SEO. But do not give a direct link for your image. Always use anchor text for linking your images. Also giving a backlink to the images instead of texts gives more effective value.

Whenever linking your image add the title tag by using the SEO-friendly keyword for better SEO rank.

How to add Image Linking?

Use the Insert menu and add images to the page
Select the image and check the Image option dialogue box for use the Link
Link the webpage or add the URL of any blog
Then click the Ok button and now Image Linking is done.

6. Make your Images Mobile -Friendly

Adding Mobile-Friendly images is best for high ranking and gives more user engagement. Adding mobile-friendly images gives more responsiveness to your site and also speeds up your website loading time. The image will adjust to the size of the device.

7. Add images to the site maps.

Adding images to the sitemap increase the chances of crawling and indexing. This helps to get more site traffic for your site.

8. Create Unique Images

Same as ignoring duplicate content, ignore the duplicate images and use the unique image for your site. Instead of direct downloading or saving an image from any source, take a screenshot of the images you want to use in the content and save it by giving the unique SEO-friendly file name.

Next, change the image properties by right-clicking the image. In detail, the option adds the image title, subject, tags, and gives ratings. This is top-secret for optimizing your images.

9. Aware of copyright image

Always use Royalty-free images for your content to avoid copyright issues. If you don’t have a license to use the images on sites like Shutterstock, Pixabay, Pexels, or DepositFiles.

If you use the image without a license key then you will face more issues, if the owner of that image saw their images on your webpage.

10. No.of Images should you use

There is no standard number of images for creating a blog or website. Maybe the count of images will depend on your page. Sometimes even a single image is enough for a blog or on other hand for some blogs you have to use 10 to 20 images. Make sure adding more images should not slow down your site.

Final Words:

These are the simple SEO image optimization tips for adding images to your website or your blog to boost your website traffic and page ranking.

Cool Tips For Image Optimization in SEO

The ranking factor of Google not only depends upon the text content present on the web page. It also depends upon the media files like Images, Video.

As an SEO Consultant, you should give importance to the images present on the web page and should optimize them to make the webpage to rank on top of the Google.

Reduce the Size:

When you insert more images on the web page, it will affect your page loading speed. Hence compress the images before uploading the web page.

Usually, when you use the images taken from the camera, the size will be very high. In these cases, compression is must to make the web pages load faster.

Add Meta Information:

Google understands every image in the webpage with the meta information. Hence make sure to add the meta information like Title, Tags, Copyright information, etc.

Add Alt text to the images, This will help the search engines to understand what the image is all about. Adding all these information will help to increase the ranks on SERP.

Create & Populate Infographics:

Create the Infographic which is relevant to the content present on the webpage and embed it. This will make the user to spend more time on your website.

Add the meta information properly to the Infographic before embedding in the website,

Also, By using the Infographic, you can create quality backlinks to the website by submitting them on various Infographic submission platforms.

Build the Sitemap:

As like the web pages, create a separate sitemap to the images present in the web page and submit it.

This will make sure that all the media files present on the website are properly crawled and indexed by the Search Engines like Google.

Thus these are the some of the cool image optimization tips which you can use for your website and improve the ranks on the SERP.

How to optimize the images in the content for better SEO?

Optimizing the text content alone will not help your website to perform well on the SERP. It’s more than that. Google considers each and every media files present on the web page.

It is important to optimize the media’s like images on the webpage to make the content rank on the top of the Google SERP.

Here let’s see some Image optimization tips to make your webpage perform better on the SERP.

Choose the right images:

Use your own images captured by you rather than using the images from the web. You can also use the stock images from the platforms like Pixabay or Pexels.

Use the images in the correct resolution which suits your UI/UX design of the website.

Ensure to use the images which doesn’t affect the responsiveness of the website in both the mobile and the desktop.

Add Meta Information:

You should add the meta information for the images. Meta information may include the alt text and the title. Use the file name for the image relevant to the content.

The alt text will help the search engines like Google to understand better about the images, If the image doesn’t load on the webpage, then the Alt text will be displayed by the search engines in the place of the images.

Compress the images:

When you try to use the images which are captured in the high-end camera’s. You should compress the size of the images before uploading. By default image size will be huge,

You can compress the images by without losing the quality. Many open source softwares are available for this. By using the compressed images you can increase the loading speed of your website.

XML Image Sitemaps:

Use the XML Sitemap to make the images to be crawled and indexed by the Google.

As like you do for normal pages, XML Sitemap submission for the images is also mandatory.

You can also exclude some of the images being crawled by the search engines. Thus overall image optimization will help you to improve the ranks.

Summary of Image Optimization:

Choose the right images with the correct resolution
Use own images or stock images
Add alt text to the images
Add title & give a relevant file name to the images
Compress the images before uploading to the website
Create XML sitemap & submit to Google

These are some of the image optimization tips which you should follow to rank your content on the SERP for the target keyword.