How to Optimize Images for SEO

Search engine optimization is pretty much a requirement if you want to improve your website’s visibility and position in organic search results. And nowadays, this also applies to any images you feature on your site. That’s because most image search engine optimization tactics tend to also enhance the user experience. As a result, your efforts will not only increase the probability that visitors will discover your website, but they will also appreciate it more once they get there. Fortunately, how to optimize images for SEO does not take countless hours of putting sophisticated SEO methods and formulas into action. A few basic steps are all that is necessary to optimize your images for search engines. In this article, you’ll learn what image SEO is, why it’s important, and what benefits it can offer.

What Is Image SEO?

Image optimization is the practice of optimizing your website’s images so that search engines can more easily discover them and understand what is being displayed to the visitor. This increases your content’s visibility and search rankings with Google, but also with other search engines like Bing and Yahoo. And we just happen to have a fantastic write-up on Google vs. Yahoo vs. Bing you should read for more information on how these search engines are similar and different. Some of these image optimization elements include the image size, file type, alt text (AKA alt tags), image titles and file names.

Far too often, people overlook this particular aspect of SEO. But what’s most important to remember is that Google is always adjusting its algorithm to incorporate more variables that boost websites that prioritize the user experience. And when you add additional context or information to your images, search results will become much more informative, leading to higher-quality visits to your site. If you decide to place image SEO on the back burner, or completely ignore it, then you run the risk of losing what rankings you may already have. Additionally, it can also be challenging to boost your organic rankings or acquire any outbound links. And, if you’re not careful, this can severely harm your website traffic in the long run.

Why Image SEO Is Important

You may be of the old-school mindset that SEO is all about content, headers, and backlinks. While you wouldn’t be wrong, since these aspects of SEO are still crucial if you want organic traffic, there are newer optimizations you should consider utilizing to “keep up with the times”. Additionally, since search engines cannot analyze pictures in the same way that humans can, you need to help Google understand the images you have placed on your site and their distinct purpose for the user. And that’s where image SEO steps into the picture. Although using these image optimization techniques requires some fundamental understanding, getting your images SEO ready for search engines is actually fairly simple.

Studies have shown that when you present information visually, people tend to absorb it faster and also have a better chance of retaining it for the long term. Why is this important, you may ask? This is essential since Google’s algorithm pays close attention to behavioral metrics that reflect the user’s experience. Bounce rates (when someone reads a single page on your website and does nothing before leaving) and time spent on the page are two significant measures of user engagement that Google monitors closely. If this doesn’t convince you that proper image SEO is important, here are some statistics that should help get you on board:

• User engagement increases by 90% when content includes optimized images (Buffer)
• Google returns images for 34% of search results (Google)
• Image search accounts for over 30% of all inquiries made across the top ten US web search properties (Moz)

Finding the Right Image

Most website developers simply grab some easily accessible stock images (on some websites like Pexels or Shutterstock), throw them up on their own website, and call it a day. Now, using stock images is a viable option if you don’t have any original photos you can use. Just keep in mind that when you use stock images, you’re using images that numerous other websites have potentially (and likely) used as well. Hence, if you’re able to use original images that you’ve created or photos that you’ve taken for the sole purpose of being used on your website, this can substantially help with user engagement. Conversely, if you must go the stock photos route, make sure the images you choose are relevant to the content on the page.

You don’t want to have an article on ‘The 10 Best Cat Toys of 2022’ and use multiple pictures of dogs. Dogs have no relevance to the topic, so they serve no illustrative purpose. And since there’s no reason for dog images to be on that page, visitors will more than likely leave the web page quite quickly. Google will then see this high bounce rate as terrible user engagement. Moreover, if you think you can use non-relevant images as long as you use relevant text, you are sadly mistaken.

This is what we refer to as ‘keyword stuffing,’ and Google frowns upon this big time! When the images on the page reflect the content on the page, and the correct titles are used, you raise your chances of reaching the top of the search results immensely.

Preparing Your Image

So, now that you’ve found the image you want to use, you’ll need to optimize that sucker for your website. If you simply add the image with zero afterthought, your website can suffer. You need to think about what to title the image, what format to use, and the specific size of the image. Let’s discuss these aspects and why they are so crucial to image optimization.

File Name

To begin, we’ll tackle the simple chore of naming the image. You may think, ‘If it’s so easy, why doesn’t everyone do it?’ That’s a good question, and we don’t have an answer for you. More than likely, they are unaware of the power of image optimization and all the advantages it can offer. Either way, you don’t want to follow in their footsteps. You want to utilize image SEO to the best of your abilities to bring more quality traffic to your site.

Be Descriptive

That’s where descriptive, keyword-rich image names come into play. The goal is to describe the image in such a way that Google can tell exactly what it is without even seeing it. And the user experience is enhanced considerably by descriptive titles, in addition to title text (not to be confused with the filename), and image alt tags (these are primarily for screen readers, web accessibility, and search engines), which help rank your page better in searches.

Naming Your Images

Furthermore, the search engines will recognize the page as one that is deserving of ranking higher because of the high-quality user experience. An excellent example would be using the image title text ‘Dog playing with a ball’ if you were using an image of a brown German shepherd playing with a tennis ball in the yard. For the alt tag (alternative text), it could be something a little more detailed like, ‘Brown German shepherd playing with a tennis ball in the backyard.’ And for the file name, you could use something like ‘german-shepherd-playing-with-tennis-ball’. Just make sure your file name doesn’t include any uppercase letters or spaces in between the words. Instead, you want to substitute a dash for every space to ensure it’s in the correct format.

• Image Title – Dog playing with a ball
• Alt Tag – Brown German shepherd playing with a tennis ball in the backyard.
• File Name – german-shepherd-playing-with-tennis-ball

File Format

Now that you’ve settled on a name for your image, it’s time to figure out what format to apply. If you’re unfamiliar with all the different image formats, this could seem a tad bit overwhelming. Some formats function well in specific circumstances, while others may pose some problems in the same situation. Ensuring that you pick the right format for your images will help with loading the image and also improve the page load speed as a whole.

But which image format is best suited for your website? Let’s go over the six primary image formats you want to be aware of:

• JPEG – The most widely used image format that has been around for decades.
• PNG – Often used for graphics, screenshots, or photos that require higher resolution and allows for background transparency to be preserved.
• GIF – Primarily used for moving graphics or animation.
• SVG – Ideal for custom icons and logos that can be viewed in multiple sizes.
• BMP – Rarely used anymore, the BMP format is typically used for bitmap images.
• WebP – A newer format developed by Google that has become increasingly popular because it allows for smaller file sizes and faster page load times.

File Size

There’s no way around the fact that image file size plays a significant role in page load time. And, since page load time can have a substantial impact on your search engine rankings, this aspect of image SEO is crucial. A good example is when an image’s dimensions are far bigger than what’s necessary for your website. Taking just a few seconds before uploading the image to your website to adjust the image dimensions can help to decrease your page load time significantly. But make sure when you resize your images that you’re not making them too small to where they show up pixelated on the front end of your site.

Additionally, having too many images on a single webpage can also slow down your website and hurt your rankings. So if you need a large number of images on your website (or just a single page), we strongly recommend using a lazy load function so that the image isn’t actually loaded until the user has scrolled to that specific portion of the page where the image is located.

You can also take things a step further by compressing them, without losing much image quality. For your image compression needs, you’ll want to use one of the several free online websites, such as imagecompressor or tinyping. They’re very intuitive and typically take less than a minute per compression.

Image Optimization Benefits

As far as website content is concerned, images arae one of the most important elements you want to focus on. The images you use on your site help to provide your visitors with a deeper understanding of what your web page is all about. And with the proper information, Google can easily determine what your images are along with showing them in the appropriate spots in search results. Let’s take a look at some benefits that image optimization can offer.

Improved Page Load Speed

Numerous analyses have shown that increased image load times directly impact your website’s rankings in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). That’s because the longer it takes to load your images, the longer it will take to load the page as a whole. Keeping a user’s attention has become more and more difficult in recent years, with our attention spans going from twelve to eight seconds (per Microsoft). But, if you listen to the SEO experts (as you should), they state site structure, unique content, along with image and page load speeds are the most vital aspects of SEO. Hence, you should never dismiss the power of quality image search engine optimization.

Higher Search Engine Rankings

Quite simply, when you take the time to properly optimize your website’s images for Google and the other search engines, your website will have a better chance of ranking higher in search results. When search engines crawl your site and discover that you have relevant, correctly titled images, they’ll reward you with higher search rankings and more website visitors.

Moreover, if your images have no bearing on the page content, maintain huge file sizes, and have subpar or no titles at all, your website traffic will most likely suffer. And, just as with most of the advantages of image SEO, higher search rankings coincide with some of the other benefits like increased traffic and improved user experience.

Increased Traffic

When people perform a search and click on your image within Google Image search results, this equates to more visitors to your website. And if you own an e-commerce website, this can benefit you greatly (in the form of $$$) as more and more “smart shoppers” are researching a product prior to purchase. So if your images are properly optimized, you have a higher likelihood of potential customers finding your product images within Google’s image search.

To summarize; when you apply the proper SEO to your website images (as described above), they tend to rank higher in image search results. And higher rankings in the search results mean more traffic to your site, and more importantly, more conversions.

Improved User Experience

When people visit your site and are met with long page load times and low-quality, blurry images, that’s a surefire way to increase your bounce rate. On the other hand, if you follow our image SEO recommendations and stick with high-quality images that are properly titled, sized, and compressed, the positive user experience on your site will be a direct reflection of your efforts.

This is especially beneficial for mobile users, given that current cell phones don’t necessarily have ideal bandwidth when you’re out and about. It’s just another reason why a top-notch user experience goes hand in hand with your website’s page load speed. And a fast page load speed will lead to a lower bounce rate. When a page loads slowly, the user loses patience and heads back to Google to hunt for other options.

It’s important to note that your bounce rate will rise considerably for every extra second the page takes to load. So to ensure that you don’t lose any visitors or conversions, you must follow the proper image SEO tactics outlined in this article to ensure your pages load quickly.

Conclusion

Now that you are fully equipped with the appropriate information with regard to image SEO, the next step is to implement these practices into your workflow. It can take some time, especially if you have hundreds of images that need optimizing. But it’s worth the time and effort – trust us.

At the end of the day, remember that SEO is not an exact science. And any SEO “expert” who says otherwise is lying. But experience has taught us that doing these “little” things will ultimately improve your chances of ranking higher on Google (or any other search engine).