We all love SEO . SEO is God and more. It is so. SEO is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient . That is, he is EVERYTHING and he is EVERYWHERE . Even in the images on our website.
How?
Yes Yes. You can help position your website/blog/e-commerce with images.
And it is that many times we overlook it, but it is as important as any other action of SEO on page: SEO for images .
And you will ask yourself: why are images so important for my SEO positioning strategy?
- Google image results represent 22% of the total share of searches made.
- Images appear for nearly 30% of all searches.
- Conversions drop by an average of 4.42% for every additional second of load time (0-5s) [ WHAAAATTT ] and the big culprit is slow loading images.
- 62 % of young consumers ( like me, who am young and beautiful and without wrinkles, he he he ) want more visual results ( if it is not read anymore… ) and Google has already hinted that it will improve, in the future Next, visual search.
So, unless you want to stop getting organic traffic and conversions to your website, it’s time you gave image SEO some serious attention.
Many people search for images with keywords and then go to the web for the image they have found. We want you to find our images and come to our website! You do not?
Also, in Google’s universal search, a few images appear at the beginning of any search without having to click on the images tab! Wouldn’t you like the images on your website to appear in the first positions so that more people would enter your page through them?
You may. Improving your SEO for images and making them rank better in the search engine.
Don’t know how to do it? Here we give you 14 TOP tips to do SEO for images and optimize the positioning of your website .
By the time you’re done reading this post, you’ll have the tools you need to increase page speed, boost rankings, and get more traffic and conversions to your website from image search results.
Long live image SEO !
What is SEO for images?
Image SEO ( or image SEO for English pitinglish ) is the practice of optimizing image size, dimensions, filenames, captions, markup, and alt text to ensure images Images load quickly and are easier to find in search engines.
Image optimization generally falls under On Page SEO .
Why is image SEO important?
Image optimization ( image SEO, my friend ) offers numerous SEO benefits:
- Improves page speed ( since we reduce file size ).
- Boost organic rankings ( because we improve the page speed of the web ).
- Increase conversions ( slow pages lose visitors and customers, you know ).
- Add quality to your content ( complementing text with images ).
- Create a better user experience (UX) for everyone, even the visually impaired.
SEO for images: How to improve the positioning of your website
14 tips to do SEO for images and optimize the positioning of your websiteCLICK TO TWEET
Basically, to improve SEO on your images and make your organic rankings take off like a rocket, you need to take all of these things into account:
- Create a good user experience
- Optimize the image quality to the maximum
- Give your images a relevant name
- Make sure to write the ALTerative Text (alt)
- Fill in the TITLE tag
- Add a Description to your images
- Whenever you can, add a caption to the image
- Surround the image with related and quality content
- Use jpg, png or gif formats
- Watch the size of the images
- Add structured data
- Send search engines a sitemap for images
- Be neat
- Link build with images
Do we see them all? Go ahead!
1. Create a good user experience first
I won’t get tired of repeating it: what is good for the user ( aka yourself ) is good for Google
And it is that Google itself already says: “Create pages designed primarily for users, not for search engines .”
When we talk about images ( which is why you are in an SEO post for images, right? ), keep in mind the following UX principles:
- Enrich the content and offer the right context : Make sure that the images are relevant and that they contribute to a better understanding of the content. Do not put arbitrary images because yes. That we know each other
- Optimize placements – Wherever possible, place images close to relevant text and leave the most important image near the top of the page if it doesn’t lose meaning.
- Provide high-quality information – According to Google, good content is just as important as good images; basically because it provides context and makes search results more “actionable”. If your content is not exhaustive and informative (hello poor content), forget about positioning your images.
- Do not insert important text in images : at least for titles/subtitles and important text elements. Why? Well, because Google cannot easily read the text designed on a graphic (such as the cover image that we have in this post). Yeah, Google isn’t infallible, baby. Better to keep the important elements (and the keywords) in HTML.
- Frequently include images : How many? Well, as many as necessary. This will make users spend more time on your page, which will increase SEO.
- Define a good structure of URLs in your images : Google takes advantage of the path of the URLs and the name of the files to interpret your images, so these URLs should have a logical organizational structure.
2. Optimize the image quality to the maximum
Have you seen any pixelated images in Google search results? I doubt it.
And it is that Google does not like low quality images (blurred or pixelated), that is why it does not include them in the results.
From Google: “ High-quality photos attract users more than blurry, unclear images. Also, in the results thumbnail, if the images are sharp they also attract more users, thus increasing the probability of receiving traffic from these users. ”
On behalf of Google and user experience ( and myself! ), make sure your images aren’t blurry or pixelated. What to do SEO for images with poop photos, you can’t, my friend .
3. Give your images a relevant name
Let’s start with the principle of SEO for images: the most essential, the crux of everything that we are going to explain below. The name of the image file has to represent the content of the image . Names such as “ image24 ”, “ caption2 ” or “Screenshot 2022-05-12 at 11.25.36” are not valid. No sir.
The name that you should give your images has to be descriptive (explain what the image is about) and concise – it is not necessary to put “stop words” such as of, and, the… – and it must contain the main keyword of the content from image. And remember, use hyphens to separate words.
Think that the name of the file is an indicator of the content of the image , so that Google, first hand, will know how to relate your image to a category. The more specific the name, the more chances we have that Google understands our content and can display the image in a better position.
4. Make sure to write the ALTerative Text (alt)
Although they are constantly improving and implementing techniques to do so, Google is unable to interpret the information offered by web images – that is, it does not know how to read them .
That is why it is so important that we use the ALT ( alternative text ) attribute so that search engines know what we are talking about. That is, the text that describes the images.
The ALT tag is the text that search engines use to know what an image is displaying . In addition, it is the text that is displayed in case the browser cannot display the image – so, if you cannot see the image, at least you can read the ALT text, to know what it is about -.
And also the text that screen readers will read aloud for people with some kind of vision problem.
In the ALT attribute we must write a concise description of the image with the keywords with which you want to position yourself. As Google tells us: “focus on creating content that is useful and rich in information, that uses keywords appropriately, and that matches the content of the page.
Do not include too many keywords in the alt attributes, as it causes a bad user experience and can cause your site to be considered spam.
5. Fill in the TITLE tag
Every image must have a title that introduces it . The TITLE tag text is what will be displayed when you hover over the photo . It must be descriptive and contain the keyword with which you want to position yourself.
Also, in image search results, this title will appear below the image, so that users better understand the context of the image and decide whether to click on it or not.
6. Add a Description to your images
To improve the positioning of an image, you must add a description of it, well done, summarized and containing the keywords that interest us. This description has to be more literal and longer than the ALT attribute.
EXAMPLE – “ Small sized pink and black Vietnamese pig playing with a yellow rubber duck in a puddle of water surrounded by green leaves. ”
7. Whenever you can, add a caption to the image
Although there is not a great correlation between writing image captions and an increase in the SEO ranking of the web, it is essential that you add captions to your images to help your readers know what the web page is about quickly.
Think about the following: a reader who enters your website through an image that has appeared in Google when searching for a term, will want to check, in a matter of seconds, if the website he has entered is going to give him what you search.
The first thing this reader will do is check if the image they have clicked is found on the web and will look at the text around it to see if they have found what they were looking for.
A good caption can tell the reader “ Stop! My article is about this topic, as you can see in the image you clicked, so keep reading and don’t leave, I don’t want you to increase my bounce rate ”.
8. Surround the image with related and quality content
It is one of the most relevant factors in terms of improving the SEO of your website. You must surround your images with content that adds value, is of quality and is related to the images . That is, the theme of the image must match the text that surrounds it.
This text must contain keywords, phrases in bold or titles and headings , as they will increase the relevance of the image. Remember that legends are also very important
9. Use jpg, png or gif formats
The best formats to do SEO for images are the most typical: .jpg, .png. and .gif , so feel free to use them. Do not upload images with rare formats such as .bmp or .tiff because you will not be doing Google or your positioning any favors.
JPG – ideal for images with details and many colors , although it is a compression format that loses quality to reduce size. However, its quality is more than enough for websites .
PNG – ideal for flat images or images with large white spaces – such as screenshots, logos, etc. -. It has higher quality than .jpg.
GIF – we will only use it for animated images .
To adapt them to the format you want you can use the Online-Convert tool .
10. Watch the size of the images – the less weight, the better
The loading speed of a website is a very important factor in the positioning that Google will give you , since the great search engine does not like slow websites at all – neither it nor anyone else! -. Among other factors, heavy images are responsible for slowing down a website , which is why you should reduce your images as much as possible without losing quality.
Although WordPress and other CMS will resize the image once uploaded, don’t do it . Get used to reducing your image to the exact measurements you need before uploading it to your blog/web/ecommerce , because when you simply insert an image and change its height and weight in the CMS to make it smaller, the browser downloads the image first. large size – the one you have uploaded – to later display it in the reduced size that you have specified.
And, always always always, compress the images before uploading them .
The ideal size that web images should have would be 70kb-100kb ( or less ), although we know that it is very difficult to achieve. Simply try to reduce the size of your image as much as possible, always taking care of its quality .
You can use Compressor.io , ILoveIMG , JPG-Optimizer or Image Compressor or BeFunky tools to compress your images.
11. Add structured data
Why? Well, because Google Images can display your images as rich snippets and include a featured badge.
In this way, you are providing users with essential information about your page, and this page receives visits from a more suitable audience segment. Google Images supports structured data of the following types:
- Product
- Video
- Prescription
Yes , you do have to follow the general structured data guidelines , as well as the specific guidelines for your structured data type ( product, video, recipe ). Otherwise, they may not be included when displaying a rich result on Google Images.
12. Send search engines a sitemap for images
All the images that appear on your website have to be in the search engine index so that they can appear in the search , that is why, if the search engine does not find your image files, it is impossible for it to register them.
You should create a sitemap specifically for images as this will help search engines find and index your images. This file includes the URL of each of the images that appear on your website, the title, the license and the caption.
If you don’t know what we’re talking about, don’t worry. The SEO optimization plugin by Yoast already includes the images within the XML Sitemaps function without you having to do anything
13. Be neat
Get in the habit of sorting your images and keeping them all in the same folder on the server, called /images/ . This small detail makes the Googlebot (GoogleBot) work faster.
14. Link build with images
The more links pointing to the image of your website, the more relevance and popularity it will receive, so that it will be better positioned .
Just as you try to get quality links when you carry out a Linkbuilding strategy, do the same but with image platforms such as Pinterest or Flickr , to get incoming links to your website through photographs.
What do you think? Did you already follow all the SEO tips for images or have you learned something new? Comment below and tell me your impressions .
And if you liked the blog, why not share it with your friends and colleagues ? Let everyone discover how to improve SEO on images!