Last Updated on July 26, 2024 by Admin
In 2024, we can all agree that we hate reading long texts. If something can be understood in short, why read long texts? That’s where we need images to cut long content short and make it engaging.
We work a lot on website and content optimization, but do you know the importance of site images? In 2024, image optimization is no longer limited to aesthetics. It is all about ensuring that they assist your website in ranking well in search engine results while simultaneously delivering the best user experience.
Think of your website as a book. The text is the content, and images are the visuals that help explain what is in the text. But if your images are not optimized, your story may not be read by as many people as you would like.
Now, let’s dive deeper into Image SEO, where you will learn how to make your images beautiful and effective for your website’s promotion.
What Is Image SEO?
Image SEO refers to optimizing images on a website to increase the chances of the images being ranked high on the search engine results pages. This includes image optimization, resizing and compression, file name descriptions, and image alt tags. Optimizing images also helps search engines identify and index the image content, leading to better positioning on the site and increased traffic. In the same sense, image SEO improves usability as the images are more easily retrievable and load faster.
Where Can Images Appear in Search?
Images can appear in various places within search results:
- Google Images
- Standard Search Results
- Google Lens
- Image Packs/ Rich snippets
12 Ways to Optimize Images for SEO
So, let’s roll up our sleeves and get started to find out how Image SEO benefits us. Below are the 12 tips that will help you make your images SEO-friendly:
#1. Create Eye-Catching Useful Images
The first step in optimization is choosing the right image. The images should be related to the content and helpful to the users. Specific, professional pictures are better than general cliché images. They are useful in capturing users and can enhance the position of your site. Original images appeal to the audience and are more likely to be shared and linked, increasing your SEO.
#2. Choose the Right Image Formats
For the best performance, file formats should be chosen carefully because they affect the picture quality and the size of the files. Here’s a quick guide:
- JPEG: Suitable for photos and images with many colors
- PNG: Perfect for pictures with inscription or pictures with lucid foundation.
- GIF: Ideal for basic animation
- WebP: A newer format maintains great quality with less file size.
#3. Give Your Images Descriptive File Names
This is like explaining an image to a blind person, a situation that is very hard to encounter in real life. What would you say? When preparing your image files for upload, this is the way you should label them. Here’s how to do it right: Here’s how to do it right:
Be descriptive but concise. Words that should be written in the alt text should be those that would describe the content of the image.
Write with connected words, and use hyphens to separate them. For instance, the file name “red-apple-on-wooden-table.jpg” is better than “redappleontable.jpg” or “red_apple_on_table.jpg.”
Certain guidelines should be followed when using pop-up ads; one of these is ensuring they are related to the page’s content. For example, if your page is about healthy snacks, “red-apple-healthy-snack.jpg” may be suitable.
Do not use names such as ‘image001.jpg’, ‘screenshot.png,’ or ‘image 1234 jpg’. These do not serve any useful information to search engines or users.
#4. Add Descriptive Alt Text
Alt text is a hidden caption for your images. While the viewer cannot see it, it is a critical aspect of Image SEO. Said simply but accurately, an example of good alt text is’ a bouquet of red roses in a garden.’ It serves a purpose for the visually impaired and tells the search engine about the picture.
#5. Add Structured Data
Schema data improves image relevancy and might result in rich snippets in the SERPs. To describe images, use schema markup and offer specific information about the images you are using. This can enhance the ability to view and the rate of clicks on the links they intend to provide.
For images, you can use it to provide extra info like:
- Image caption
- Creator’s name
- Licensing details
#6. Resize & Compress Images (150 kb)
Large image files on your site are a disadvantage because they will shorten loading times, affecting user experience and optimization.
Resize images before uploading. If your content area is 800px wide, there is no need for a 2000px wide image and vice versa. Resize it to fit.
Optimize images by resizing them and decreasing their size. Different services, such as TinyPNG or Squoosh, come in handy for image compression since they can help minimize image sizes in a manner that is not easily visible.
Most images should ideally be at least 150 KB in size. Larger and higher-quality images might require a larger space, but they should not be more than 1 MB.
#7. Use Responsive Image Scaling
If your images are to be viewed on various devices, as in contemporary society, they must be suitable for phones, tablets, laptops, and even desktops with big screens.
One should employ CSS to adapt the image to the screen size to ensure images fit on the screen. The max-width: No stakeholders are your enemy here; it is about 100% property.
It is advisable to have different image dimensions for the same image depending on the device being used to access the website. If you have a large image that might be too heavy to download on a mobile device, you can always provide a low-resolution image to be displayed on mobile devices.
Use the following attribute to provide multiple image versions: srcset. This allows the browser to choose a specific device’s most appropriate font size.
It is highly recommended that you test the responsive images on different devices and screen sizes to ensure they display well on all devices.
Responsive images can adapt to any device and can also be beneficial for mobile search engine optimization.
#8. Implement Lazy Loading
Lazy loading refers to loading images only when needed or when they can be seen on the screen, reducing the loading of images on the first view of the web page. This is especially beneficial for sites with numerous images on a given page since it minimizes the number of requests made to the server. The above feature can be implemented by adding the loading=”lazy” attribute to the image tags.
#9. Create an Image Sitemap
An image sitemap is similar to a map guide that assists search in identifying a specific site’s images.
The site map should include all relevant images of the site. If a URL is used, it must be added, along with a caption, a title, and, if possible, the license.
The second step is to submit your image sitemap to Google Search Console. This makes certain that Google is aware of all your images.
This should be done whenever you add new images to your site to ensure that search engines know the new content. Ideally, it should be updated frequently for the best results.
Many SEO plugins can help you create and update your site’s image sitemaps.
Using an image sitemap, which is essentially an XML file that lists the URLs of the images on your site, can help the images be indexed more quickly and may also be displayed in the image search results.
#10. Use a CDN
A CDN can help to optimize the image delivery to your users, although those who are far from the server.
A CDN duplicates your images to various servers around the world. When a particular user opens your site, he is given images from the nearest server.
They also improve traffic flow by minimizing latency and ensuring faster loading of images and other elements in a page. Different load speeds might lead to better user experience and improved search rankings.
CDNs also help with traffic surges. Load balancing spreads the load across many servers.
#11. Enable Browser Caching
Browser caching is a technique that saves images on the user’s personal device so that each time the website is opened, it takes less time to load. Some images are large enough and may take time to download. In the server settings, give the right cache expiry time to allow images to be loaded from the local cache and not downloaded repeatedly. This enhances pages’ loading speed and, thus, the overall user experience.
#12. Apply On-page SEO Best Practices
Just a quick reminder to stay focused and never forget that Image SEO is just one of the many components of SEO. Raw materials, personnel, plant, and equipment are other factors that should not be forgotten.
On-page SEO uses descriptive keywords in the title and meta description of developed web pages. This assists search engines in understanding what your page (and any images you may have on it) is all about.
Ensure your content is excellent and closely related to the theme. As noted, high-quality content can also help images rank better.
Apply header tags ( H1, H2, etc.) to organize the content into headers and subheaders. This will also benefit users and search engines by helping them better understand and make sense of the content.
Ensure the URL format is clean and descriptive so customers can easily understand what they find on that page. This can indirectly help your images by increasing the overall Search Engine Optimization on the page.
Conclusion
And so you have the complete overview of Image SEO: how to become a true master in 2024. The ways mentioned above can help you enhance the performance of your images on the website. At AlgoSaga, we pride ourselves on helping you understand how SEO changes as the world evolves. However, as I have said before, Image SEO aims to make the site friendly to search engines and visitors. Well, go ahead and SEO services for images like yours always should have. Your website (and your visitors) will thank you!