SEO involves a lot of different parts, so businesses can skip a few small steps to practice good SEO on the site. But all you can do to enhance SEO is to make a difference. Taking the time to optimize images for SEO is a simple and important step to make the website rank higher on search engines. This is one of the small things that businesses often overlook. So, learn how to optimize images for effective SEO right now!
Optimize images for effective SEO
Why is image optimization for SEO important?
Much of the way we understand SEO is all about content and keywords. But images also play a huge role. They play an extremely important role in the user experience.
In fact, one study found that people were 80% more likely to read content including images and 64% more likely to remember it.
Images are an important part of how we experience a website. That’s important for SEO because Google’s algorithm pays attention to behavioral indicators that reflect user experience, like bounce rate and the amount of time visitors stay on the site.
7 image optimization tips for effective SEO
For every image you use on your website, follow these tips to optimize them for search engines.
1. Use relevant, high quality images
This is very important for the user experience aspect of SEO. Images that are unrelated to the content will confuse the reader. Blurry or cropped images will make your site look unprofessional. So first make sure your images use a link to the content.
In addition, you should also note to not use any copyrighted images. But don’t worry because the free online photo store is a lot. You guys can use.
2. Customize the file name
This is one of the very easy steps. But amazingly, people didn’t do that.
Before you add images to your site, take the time to customize the file name. Change it into something relevant to the page and include one of your target keywords for the page. If your website is about a backpack product you sell, the image could be named like cach-toi-uu-hinh-anh.jpg.
Most visitors will never see the file name. But it gives search engines a little more information about what’s on the page and the best keywords to link to it.
3. Use alt tags
This is another part of the website that most visitors won’t see. You can provide alternative text for every image you add to the site. It will display instead of your image if the browser has trouble loading the image. This text is a part of the page that you can use to signal to search engines what the page is about.
Always update alternative text for your images. Include your main keyword for the page and description of the image itself.
If you prefer to use html, you can add alt = “your alt text” to the image tag.
4. Find the right quality ratio, size
This part is a bit complicated because you want your image to be really good. However, you do not want them to slow down your site. Site speed is an SEO ranking factor. If your visitors have to wait a while for your site to load. That is very bad for user experience and SEO.
Usually the file size of an image is much larger than the file size that needs to be displayed on your site. If you use CMS like WordPress, resize the way an image appears on your website after you upload it.
You can make your site faster while still displaying images in high resolution by resizing your image file before you upload them to your site. This is usually easy to do with standard programs on most computers, like the Mac Preview program or Microsoft Paint. Or if you have Adobe Photoshop, you can use the “Save to Web” command to help you find the smallest file size that still provides good resolution.
After resizing, you can still make your image file sizes smaller without losing quality by compressing them. Use tools like TinyPNG or JPEGmini to make this process easy.
5. Choose the right file type.
You may have noticed that there are three main types of image files. But you may not really understand the difference between each file. Understanding the different file types can help you choose the best file type for your needs:
- JPG is one of the most popular file formats. It uses small file size and is widely supported. But image quality is not always as good as with PNG files. The format does not support transparent backgrounds, so there are some cases of JPG not working.
- PNG is a file format for images that provides high resolution. It can support good text description of images for SEO. The main downside of PNG is that it tends to require larger file sizes than JPG and GIF. It is often best for complex images and images that include text.
- GIF does not support a wide color range like the above two types. But it could be a good choice for simpler images. It supports small file sizes and transparent backgrounds.
For photos, JPG usually works well. For designed graphics, GIF and PNG are more common, and if you need a higher quality version then PNG is the perfect choice.
6. Add images to your sitemap (sitemap)
Google encourages website owners to submit their sitemaps. The goal is to help them crawl the page better and add it to the index. They also allow you to include images in your sitemap alternately and create a separate sitemap to submit.
By providing Google with clear information about the images on your site. You will increase their visibility in Google Image Search. This will increase the overall searchability of your site.
7. Store images on your own website
Although you may want to host your images on a third-party website like Imgur to save space. But that can lead to real risks. Whenever those sites are overloaded with traffic. Your image may not load, creating a confusing experience on the site. That will make your brand unprofessional.
You will be better served by hosting images on your own website. Use the tips provided above to make the image file size smaller. From there so they don’t slow down your site more.
Performing image optimization for effective SEO is extremely easy. You just need to spend a little time finding the right image and optimize. So, after adding to the site, you can help the site to rank high on the search engine rankings. Good luck!