SEO forms the basis of modern digital marketing because online experiences begin with a search engine. To be precise, 68% of people begin with Google when they get on the internet. The importance of SEO and ranking high on Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) is highlighted by the fact that only 0.63% of users go to the second page of Google. Moreover, 60% of marketers assert that their highest quality leads come from inbound SEO,and these leads have a nearly 15% close rate.
However, SEO comprises of a lot of different things, and among the most important ones is the optimization of images. The visuals on your website make it more aesthetic and engaging for users, which makes this part of the SEO process significant.
What does image optimization entail?
Before getting into how to optimize images, it is important to talk about what this term means. In order to improve user engagement, photos must be produced and delivered in the best possible format, size, and resolution. In order for search engine crawlers to read photos and grasp page context, it also entails appropriately labeling them with metadata.
Images take up more space than any other component of the website, and as reported by research, they take up 21% of the weight of a standard web page. This percentage is likely to have increased as picture use has increased recently. As a result, site speed is significantly impacted by image size and complexity.
Tips for image optimization
Here are some tips that can help you optimize the images on your website.
1. Resize images
Whether you are using stock images or custom ones, they must be the appropriate size. And even before you do that, it is important to know that file and image sizes are two different things. The file size is the storage that the image occupies on your device of choice, like 2.0 MB, for instance. Image size, on the other hand, is the dimension of the photo, which is measured in terms of pixels.
While file sizes matter, the image size and its dimensions are far more important with respect to SEO. A photo with higher resolutions can impact the load speed of your website. Even a decrease of a few seconds in the load speed can drive visitors away, causing you to lose out on a potential customer. The appropriate image dimension can vary from website to website and even social media pages.
You can optimize images for your website and social media in different ways. The first is to pick the right format to save the file. Simple images are best saved in PNG, while those with more colors are better suited to JPEG. Also, compression rate has an impact too. Editing tools like Adobe Photoshop have ‘save for the web’ options that optimize file quality but reduce file size for the best dimensions in the ideal storage space.
2. Tweak file names for better SEO
While it may come as a surprise, how you label your image can also influence SEO scores. Try to include descriptive but relevant keywords for the best results. Adding your target keywords at the beginning of the name and then separating themfrom other words using hyphens can have a significant impact.
Also, it is vital to note that you don’t use underscores instead of hyphens because search engines don’t recognize those symbols. To offer more clarity, a picture of a mountain is better saved as the-great-smoky-mountains.jpg rather than mountains111.jpg.
3. Alt tags are important
Although the term’ alt tag’ isn’t the appropriate phrase, alt or alternative text is the accepted label. Still, you may be wondering what alt text is. It is the text that helps describe the image for alternative sources like people who are visually impaired, have images disabled on their web pages, or other agents that can’t “see” the images per se.
Missing alternative or alt text means that Google won’t be able to index the image on your website correctly, ultimately affecting the SEO ranking. Alt text is also great for times when some glitch in the website prevents images from loadingproperly. Ensure you don’t stuff keywords excessively in the alt text and add brand-relevant phrases in 10 to 15 words to boost the image’s visibility.
4. Customize images to be more mobile friendly
Your entire website should be designed in a way that is mobile-friendly, but ensuring the images open properly on a hand-held device is vital too. Not only does the absence of mobile optimization impact user experience, but it also impacts SEO. Google’s search engine algorithm utilizes mobile-first indexing since most of the traffic these days comes from smartphones and tablets.
You need to ensure that the website, its text, and visuals are all adaptive to the device on which they are being viewed.
5. Fix the title of your image
Platforms like WordPress typically use the file name to determine the image’s title. Use appropriate keywords to update the image title if you are not working with WordPress. Do it the same way you did the file name described in the previous section. Although they are less significant for SEO, image names can help the alt text by adding more context. Consider including a brief call to action like ‘buy now’ or ‘download today’in the image title to increase user interaction.
6. Make sure that the text and images complement each other
Google’s search engine algorithm has evolved substantially over the years. It can pick relevance, content quality, and time users spend interacting with a webpage to decide result rankings. The same goes for images too. When the image you use doesn’t fit well with the text that is placed, not only can visitors be thrown off, but Google can see that too. The result is that the SEO suffers. Therefore, it is essential to add images that are relevant to the text only.
Conclusion
Images on the website, their dimensions, placement, and relevance are all important for SEO. It is no hidden fact that modern marketing has much to do with enhancing search engine rankings for websites and social media pages. If you are not able to focus on these aspects and do them right, your business can suffer due to the performance of the website based on its decreasing SEO.
