What Is Image Optimization For SEO?

A content or website may be rich with information, but it would not be appealing to the audience if there are no images in it. Because people prefer visual content rather than only the textual context. Images bring life to your content and improve website SEO as well.

Image optimization refers to reducing the file size of an image without compromising quality. It is done to reduce page loading time.

Moreover, making decorative images and product images rank on search engines is also Image Optimization.

Image SEO helps in improving your rank on Google by giving user-engaging content to the audience.

Tactics to improve image SEO are discussed in the passage.

RESIZING THE IMAGES

It must be noted that image size and file size are separate things. File size refers to the amount of storage space an image needs on the server (e.g. 400 kilobytes). While Image size indicates the dimensions of the image (e.g. 1000 by 600 pixels).

High-Quality images mainly shot on a professional camera, slower the page load time. The following are a few tips to get the best image size for social platforms.

Get Right Compression Rate

The too compressed image size can ruin the quality. While with a low compression rate, the file size will be huge. Many image-editing tools like Adobe Photoshop, have a “save for the web” feature, which gets the appropriate compression rate.

Other tools are listed below.

-Image optimization tools: Gimp, Pixlr, Triage, Affinity Photo, JPEG Mini, paint.NET, etc.

-WordPress plug-ins: TinyPNG, ShortPixel, Yoast SEO, ImageRecycle, EWWW Image Optimizer, WP Smush, etc.

-Tools to test speed: GTmetrix, WebPage Test, Google PageSpeed Insights, WebWait, Pingdom, etc.

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Pick The Right File Format

There are top 4 image formats for the web, namely, SVG, GIF, JPG, and PNG. Each has its own benefits based on animation, vector, transparency, lossy, raster, etc.

Mostly, the JPEG format is used for images with more colors and PNG for simple images.

IMAGE FILE NAME OPTIMIZATION

For a ranking in image search results and enhancing website SEO, and apt-file name must be chosen for an image. Name the file with descriptive, relevant keywords to boost SEO. This should be done before uploading the image.

Avoid using underscores in the keywords, because search engine crawlers cannot recognize the names individually. Rather use target keywords at the start and separate them with hyphens.

The filename should be understood by both humans and crawlers. To illustrate, the original name for an image of a man in a pool is “Pool123.jpg”. Now, it should be renamed with a clear description as “man-swimming-in-a-swimming-pool.jpg”

ALT TAG MUST BE SEO FRIENDLY

ALT tags are text substitutes to images when search engine bots are not able to crawl them. Without alternative texts, image content can not be indexed on search engines.

Even when there is trouble in image loading, alt text can still be read by bots and ranked in SERP. They also help in web accessibility. If you hover over an image, you can see the alt text.

Alt tags must use brand-related keywords to boost visibility. But too much keywords stuffing must be avoided. Write in plain language, add the model number or the serial number of the product, if there is any.

For instance, image image is <img src=“2012-Ford-Mustang-LX-RED.jpg”

and the alt tag is <alt=“2012 Ford Mustang LX Red”>

MAKE USE OF UNIQUE IMAGES

Users are far more attracted to the image first than reading your content. An appealing image relevant to your topic will leave an impression on the reader and may inspire him to share your content further.

Avoid using the same royalty-free stock images that have been seen a thousand times. For a better user experience, make use of the original images. Moreover, it will increase the chances to raise your SEO rank.

A high-quality, original image will have more SEO benefits than an optimized stock image.

OPTIMIZE THUMBNAILS

Thumbnail images are used by many e-commerce portals to display their products on category pages. They are quick and don’t take too much space.

However, you need to be careful with thumbnails, as sometimes they affect page load speed. Thumbnails are usually shown during a user’s shopping process. If it takes too long to load, it may prevent a potential customer from making.

Thereby, keep the file size of thumbnails as small as possible. Also, ensure that the alt text of the thumbnail image and its bigger version image are both different. The varied alt text will let the thumbnail to be indexed.

IMAGE SITEMAPS

Image sitemaps help Google to index images that are not mentioned in the webpage source code. All the unidentified flashy images, javascript galleries, and image pop-ups on your website are located on an image sitemap.

For instance, the path to sitemap can be shown by inserting this line in your robot.txt. file

  

Sitemap: http://example.com/sitemap_location.xml

Also, through Search Console, you can submit the sitemap to Google.

Google Webmaster Tools provide guidelines to format sitemap appropriately. A separate sitemap list can be created to mention images exclusively with specific tags.

MOBILE RESPONSIVE IMAGES

Mobile SEO gives better user engagement and more ranking power. Thus, it is important to optimize images for the mobile-first index. This will also prevent low conversions and a high bounce rate.

Mobile responsive images should be created. That means whatever platform you use whether desktop or mobile, the image will scale as per the site size. It will adjust as per the device used.

IMAGE STRUCTURED DATA

Structured data is a way of presenting your website to make it easier for search engines to understand. It will display your images as rich results.

For instance, if you run a food recipe site and use structured data for your images. Then, Google can add a badge to your images depicting it as a recipe image. Google image support structured data for Recipe, Video, and Product.

ADDING CAPTIONS TO IMAGE

A concise caption can be used with the images. Captions like URLs can be indexed by search engines. As per KissMetrics, image captions are read 300% more than the content body itself.

Topic related captions make it more engaging and easier for readers to understand. The caption must have a page and image relevant keywords in it to improve SEO. Misleading captions will lead to a high bounce rate.

Thus, avoid leaving captions blank to attain the most of SEO.

CONCLUSION

To get a successful SEO and good website rank, image optimization is an add-on element to conquer it in a better way. Moreover, to improve page load speed, better user experience, and SEO results image optimization is a must.