Have you ever wondered how Google decides which image should rank higher? Well, the secret behind it can be to optimize the image for SEO. You can miss out on sales, traffic, and user engagement if your image optimization is not up to the mark. Before deciding which website to rank on a specific search query, Google has to look at over 200 factors. A well-optimized image can help you stand out from the crowd of different sites that have not optimized their image.
The good news is that image optimization is not so complicated project. In your current image process, only a few changes can help your website gain more leads and traffic, which will help you in making more sales. Let’s discuss some important aspects of image optimization.
Importance of Image Optimization
A well-optimized image works better in getting more visibility in Google, which is the secret of getting more traffic. Therefore websites optimize images. Besides this, some other benefits of image optimization can be:
Improves the User Experience
If you have optimized your images well, they will display correctly, which is important to improve UX. This makes your website easier to navigate. For example, using large-size images can hide the screen or it can cover other important things on the page.
Makes the Site Speed Faster
Speed matters a lot when it comes to SEO. It can slow your site down if the size of your image is very large or if you have not formatted it in the correct way. This will kill your rankings and annoy site visitors.
Makes your Site More Reachable
Some steps of optimization, such as alt tags, can make the navigation of your website easier, which is very beneficial for those who use screen readers. Web accessibility is beneficial for site visitors and for SEO.
Image Optimization Best Practices
Do you want to know what are the most important factors to make sure that your images are findable and don’t make the speed of your site slow? Well, there are many factors. Some of the important tips to optimize images are:
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Image size optimization
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Image file name optimization
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Use alt tags
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Make mobile-friendly Images
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Image title Optimization
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Include captions
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Use unique images
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Make sure the text complements the image
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Add image structured data
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Use site maps
Let’s explore them one by one:
1.Image Size Optimization
File size and image size are two different things. Image size shows its dimension; for example, 1024 pixels by 680 pixels. Similarly, file size refers to the storage space, such as 350 kilobytes. Because of larger dimensions and high resolution of images, your page load times may slow down. For printed materials, they are the best option, but they should be scaled down and resized for the web.
Each of the formats of images, like GIF, PNG, and JPEG, have their own advantages. If you are using images with lots of colors, JPEG is recommended. However, PNG is best for simple ones. When an image is compressed well, it affects its size and quality greatly. If you keep the file small, the quality of the image will be worse. You can check different compression rates and file types and see which is perfect for your image.
There is an option of save-for-the-web in many image editing tools that are available online, such as Adobe Photoshop. These tools minimize the size of the file automatically; thus, the image quality is optimized.
2.Image File Name Optimization
You must use descriptive and relevant keywords in the file name of the image to make its SEO most powerful. At the start of the name, it is good practice to use target keywords. Moreover, hyphens can separate them. Keep in mind that search engines don’t identify underscores, so avoid using those. If you use, your words will not be visible individually.
The names of the files should make sense for humans as well as for search engines. For example, consider an image file for a blog post about on-page SEO techniques. The original image file name is SEO-image789.jpg. To optimize it for both humans and search engines, you can rename the file to something more descriptive and relevant, such as on-page-SEO-techniques.jpg.
3.Use Alt Tags
An image might be understandable by humans, but search engines require clues for this purpose. Search engines cannot index your image content correctly if it is without alternative text.
A good alt tag is useful for users who are visually impaired. Besides this, it also provides context. If any glitch occurs and the page cannot upload, a good alt tag appears really helpful in such a situation. The reason is that, in order to rank the page, a search engine reads the alternative text.
An alt tag should be written in a more detailed way as compared to a file name. To boost visibility, you can use the terms that are relevant to the brand in the alt tags but avoid keyword stuffing.
4.Make Mobile Friendly Images
Search engines mainly focus on the mobile version of a site because the algorithm of Google uses mobile-first indexing. There, you should pay attention to making your images mobile-friendly. This is possible if you make sure that your site layout and images are quick to respond to the viewing device.
There are many builders and templates for websites that change the size of an image automatically. In such cases, specify the image size according to the width of the device. For this purpose, you must attach a bit of custom CSS code to your website.
5.Image Title Optimization
When you are building a website on WordPress, it automatically takes the title from its file name. If the title is not descriptive and doesn’t explain the image or you are not using WordPress, you must change it with suitable keywords as you do with the file name.
Although image titles are not so important for SEO, they can add more context to the alt text. In terms of user engagement, image titles are more useful. Therefore, it’s a good practice to provide a short Call-to-Action like Download Now or Buy Today.
6.Include Captions
The words that are written directly under the images are called image captions. They may not affect the SEO directly. However, unlike alt text and file names, they are visible and can help in ranking the website.
The addition of captions can impact SEO indirectly. This way, engagement matrices and user experience can be improved.
7.Use Unique Images
Although you can use stock photos on your websites, but are not sure that they will help in rankings because other sites probably use the same picture. As distinctive written content is helpful in ranking the website, in the same way, a unique image assists in better SEO.
8.Make Sure the Text Complements the Image
The page text can assist search engines in defining the relevancy of your photos. Thus, add more description if there is not enough information in the text to describe the image completely.
9.Add Image Structured Data
If you put structured data on the pages of your website, your images will come as rich results by the search engines. Google images have the quality to support structured data for recipes, product images, and videos. For instance, if it knows image text, it puts a badge on it and accompanies it.
10.Use SiteMaps
Google keeps the sitemap of your website, which is like a file that contains a list of its web pages. It informs the search engines about the map of your site’s content. Therefore, they are an essential part of SEO.
If you want to make sure that all the search engines notice all your images, like thumbnails, photos, infographics, videos, memes, etc, you must add them to your site map.
You must include all the relevant information in each image, such as license info, URL location, title, caption, and description. Similarly, add relevant facts to each video, such as raw video file URL, URL location, title, thumbnail URL, and description.
Tools and Plug-ins for Image Size Optimization
When adding images to your blog, it's crucial to optimize them for website performance. Uploading large images, like the 764-kilobyte Northern Lights picture at 3,300 pixels by 2,199 pixels, can slow down your site. To avoid this, resize and compress images before uploading to reduce both pixel size and file weight. Optimizing images ensures faster loading times, enhancing the overall user experience on your blog.
For this purpose, you can take help from Photoshop and other plug-ins such as:
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Trimage
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Pixlr (JPEG Optimization)
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Kraken (Bulk Compression)
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ImageOptim (Mac Only)
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FileOptimizer
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OptiPNG
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Photopea
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JPEG Mini
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Gimp
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Affinity Photo
WordPress Plug-ins for Image Optimization
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Yoast SEO
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TinyPNG
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Optimus Image Optimizer
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EWWW Image Optimizer
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WP Smush
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ShortPixel
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ImageRecycle
These plugins allow you to compress images directly on the website. You need to:
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Install and activate the ShortPixel plugin.
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Upload the original image to the media library.
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The plugin will automatically compress the image.
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Image Optimization in Photoshop
If you get images from Canva, if you make them in Canva, they do not download compressed. So you'd have to make them in Canva, download them, go into your image editing program, and then compress them there. You need to:
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Open the image in Photoshop.
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Go to Image and then Image Size.
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Change the resolution to 72, which is the standard for web.
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Adjust the width and height if necessary.
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Click on OK.
To save the image optimized for the web, go to Save for Web instead of Save or Save As. In the Save for Web window, select the JPEG format and choose the quality level. The lower the quality, the smaller the file size.
Optimizing images for websites is essential for improving load times and user experience. Whether you choose to use a photo editing software like Photoshop or a plugin like ShortPixel, the goal is to reduce the file size without sacrificing too much quality. Experiment with different settings to find the right balance for your website.
Test Speed
After optimizing images, you must test the website page loading times to know that it is quick enough. Many tools are used for checking the speed of the page. Some of them are as follows:
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WebWait
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Pingdom
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GTmetrix
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WebPage Test
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Google PageSpeed Insights
Takeaway
Before uploading any image to your website, it is crucial to consider above mentioned image optimization strategies. Among these, ensuring the relevance of alt text and image to the page content stands out as a fundamental tip. By adhering to these optimization practices, you not only improve your site's SEO but also enhance the overall user experience. Remember, a well-optimized image is not only visually appealing but also contributes significantly to the performance and discoverability of your website. Implement these strategies diligently, and watch your website climb the ranks in search engine results, to ultimately boost its online visibility and success.