By now you probably already know what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is, but in case you need to refresh your memory, here are some articles on the topic.
What you probably didn’t know is that for your website to perform optimally, you also need to work on the SEO of your images.
In this article, we explain the impact of images on your site’s SEO, and we give you 6 tips for optimizing them. Let’s do it?
What is image SEO?
Images do much more than make your website more visually attractive, dividing your content into “sections” and illustrating the theme presented. Furthermore, images also have a significant impact on website performance.
When the process is done correctly, the website’s pages will have better results, particularly organic hits from searches. This is because having optimized images helps them appear in “image” search results, bringing new visits to your website.
Here are 6 tips to optimize your images and obtain the best organic results possible!
Tip #1 – Give your image files descriptive names.
As we mentioned earlier, an image with good SEO is more likely to appear in search results. For example, with a good descriptive name, these engines can understand the image information, making the process even simpler.
The photos you take with any camera, as a rule, are created with names like “IMG123.jpg”. As you can see, this name does not give any information about the content of the image.
Let’s imagine that the photo shows a beach at night, if the photo has the name “praia.jpg” it is too generic, but, for example “praia-noite-portugal.jpg”, it is much more specific. With this data, search engines can more easily index the information, presenting the image in more specific results.
Tip #2 – Use correct dimensions and size.
As we have already mentioned in other content, search engines analyze the speed of websites. Therefore, if you have images that are very large, in addition to the unnecessary space they will take up on your server, they will take longer to load. When creating images, always take this factor into account.
Alternatively, for example, you can install an image compression plugin on your website. This way, when you upload them to it, they will be automatically compressed.
Furthermore, the images must also have the dimensions that best suit the content and page templates on your website. It is not necessary to have an image at 3000x3000px, if on your website you are going to present it at 300x300px. In addition to reducing the dimensions, this way you will also reduce the size that the image occupies.
Tip #3 – Use images in the appropriate context.
Another factor that helps you understand the information in your images is the context in which they are presented. You should always use images on relevant sites and contextualized in your content.
For example, imagine you were writing an article about the best beaches in Portugal, in that case it doesn’t make sense to show images of places that aren’t in Portugal. Right?!
If you want, to provide even more context, you can always write a caption on the images.
Tip #4 – Add “Alt Text” to all your images.
“Alt Text” is perhaps one of the most important components of image SEO, and also the most unknown or overlooked. This describes the exact content of the image. Furthermore, it is also used by users with accessibility systems, reading the text for users. For example, users with visual impairments.
Here, the description should be more detailed than in the image name. Using the example from point 1. Instead of “beach-night-portugal”, here you could write “A beach in Portugal at night with a starry sky”.
Tip #5 – Add your images to the “Sitemap”.
Google recommends that images be added to your site’s sitemap, or even that a separate sitemap be created just for images. This will make search engines discover them, and index them in the results, more easily and quickly.
WordPress, for example, has SEO plugins that automatically add images to the sitemap when they are uploaded to your website.
Tip #6 – Use unique images.
Previously, we wrote an article about “Finding the best images for your content!”. We refer to image banks and also the option to create your own images. This option, despite being the most laborious, is the most rewarding, as this way your images will be unique.
There is no problem using image banks. However, these won’t help your SEO as much, as the images are already available on other sites.
Creating unique and original images will always be the best option!
We hope these 6 tips help you improve your website’s SEO! And you know, if you have any questions, send us a message. Don’t forget to follow our Social Networks: Facebook; YouTube; Instagram; LinkedIn.
See you soon…