Unless you’re working with a reliable white label SEO services, you might not be aware that your images can also impact your rankings when it comes to Google. For this reason, it’s important to be aware of some of the best practices when it comes to the images hosted on your site. Doing so can help boost your search engine rankings and also make your site cleaner and easier to navigate.
Below you’ll find some of the leading tips to ensure that every image on your site is properly sized and optimized to produce the best rankings possible.
What Exactly is SEO Image Optimization?
Optimizing your website’s content for search engines is one of the best ways to increase leads and clickthroughs and generate solid online results. However, SEO optimization is most often thrown around when it comes to the static content of your site, meaning service pages, blogs, and other text where industry-related keywords can be introduced. But this doesn’t mean your images don’t require a little TLC as well.
In the simplest of terms, Image SEO is directly related to user experience. Ultimately, the better user experience that Google and other engines think your site will provide, the higher up you’ll be in the rankings. Additionally, search engine crawlers also read the text behind your images, so this also plays a large role in how well your site ranks.
Let’s take a look at some of today’s leading tips and best image SEO practices.
Tip #1: Choose the Right File Name
You want any search engine to be able to know precisely what type of image you have without even looking at it, which is why all great image SEO tactics begin with selecting the best file name to describe an image. The main keyphrase you choose should reflect your image. For example, if you have a picture of a plumber unclogging a drain, the main subject of the photo should be plumber-drain-cleaning-service.jpg or something along those lines.
When choosing file names, it’s important to keep in mind that your focus keyphrase (i.e. the one that will be read first by Google and others) should always be at the beginning of your image file name.
Tip #2: Select the Right Format
The right format will depend on the type of image you have and how you intend to use it. For more detailed photos and illustrations, using a JPEG will often provide clear colors while still maintaining a relatively small file size. For logos and icons, SVG images work best, as well as PNG images, especially if you want a transparent background. For those who want high-quality images with much smaller file sizes, try utilizing tools such as Squoosh to convert them to WebP files.
Tip #3: Scale Image for Reduced Loading Times
When it comes to SEO, loading times are extremely important. This is because it’s easier for search engines to assess faster sites. This means that if you have images that take forever to load on your website, it’s going to negatively affect rankings. To avoid such a scenario, always be sure your images are properly scaled, meaning they’ve been sized for the dimensions they’re going to be displayed on your site.
Tip #4: Add the Right Info to Your Image
One of the things that any reliable white label SEO audit will stress to you is the importance of including as much concise information as possible with each of your images. Doing so will ensure that Google and other search engines have all they need for their algorithms. Adding captions will enable users to scan content more easily. Including alternate text and titles is also beneficial for cases where the user is unable to see the image displayed for some reason.
Tip #5: Add Image Structured Data
Including structured data on your website can enable search engines to display your pages/images more easily. Doing so also helps to provide better results and at least rise in the rankings as far as image searches are concerned. Another big reason is that Google allows structured data for recipes, videos, and products, meaning that adding such data to your images can be a big help in the long run.
Here’s a Bit More Image SEO Insight…
Auditing Images on Your Website
Let’s say you’ve got a great website but are revamping it for one reason or another, or simply want to make sure all of your images are properly optimized. What do you do? The easiest way to determine if all of the images hosted on your site are up to snuff is to perform an image audit, which can be easily done by sorting your FTP image folder by size. You can then click on the URL of a particular image to determine how well they’re being loaded or if there are any image-compression issues.
Image Recognition & New Image Search Features
Nowadays, it’s more important than ever for e-Commerce sites to add product schema markups that boast the right images. Choosing these images carefully is key, as these days, due to Google’s reverse-search capabilities and other AI implementations, product schema pages will often load along with all the relevant data directly in the actual image search. This means that potential customers can be shopping for your product by simply sifting through images of it to find the right pricing and availability info.
Our white label SEO & image optimization services can set you up for online success!
Do you want to make sure your company is doing all it can to remain at the forefront? white label digital marketing agency has helped hundreds of clients improve their online visibility, generate more leads and returns, and increase their clientele. Contact them today to learn more about their white label PPC, SEO, citation building, and content syndication services.
