SEO Optimisation For Images

If you ever upload images to your website, chances are your process may be as simple as inserting, publishing, and forgetting about it. Image search engine optimisation achieved – right?

Wrong!

Without properly optimising your images, your site may be less likely to rank in relevant search results due to slow loading speeds and missing image alt text.

So what exactly does SEO for images entail? Let’s dive in!

Table of Contents

• What is image SEO?
• Why are images so important for SEO?
• How to optimise images for search results

What is Image SEO?

Image search engine optimisation is the practice of optimising the images on your website so they appear in search results. Depending on your industry, this could be a critical SEO practice you’ve been overlooking.

The process goes beyond uploading visually appealing pictures to your website. It involves optimising elements associated with images, like file names, alt text, captions, and image descriptions.

These optimisations provide search engines with relevant information about the content and context of the images, helping them to better understand and index the visual assets on your website. By investing in image SEO, you empower your website to perform better in image search results.

Why are Images Important for SEO?

Adding photos, infographics, and illustrations to your website can make your content easier for readers to understand. They’re excellent for making long articles more interesting, showing off data, and generally making your website more engaging.

Search engines are constantly improving their search features. When a user searches on Google Images, they’ll see options to filter, view information about the image, and see who the creator was. This helps search engines and people find your content more easily, bringing more traffic to your site.

Images are crucial in SEO for several reasons, including:

• Enhanced User Experience: Websites with visually appealing images tend to attract more visitors.
• Higher Click-Through Rates (CTR): Content accompanied by relevant images typically achieves higher CTRs.
• Image Search Traffic: Optimising images for search engines can significantly boost website traffic.
• Reduced Bounce Rates: Engaging images can prolong visitor engagement and decrease bounce rates.
• Featured Snippets: Google often showcases images in featured snippets, providing extra visibility opportunities for websites.
• Social Media Sharing: Compelling images can lead to increased social media interaction, resulting in more inbound links and improved SEO performance.

Hot Tips to Effectively Optimise Images for Search Results

1. Choose the Right File Format

It’s important to choose an appropriate file format for your images to optimise your website’s performance and visual appeal. Image formats for Google include; JPEG, PNG, WebP, BMP, GIF, SVG, and the newly adopted AVIF. Take a look below at the differences between our preferred file types:

PNG (Portable Network Graphics)

• Superior image quality
• Preserves intricate details and transparency
• Larger file sizes which impact loading times

Our Recommendation: It’s wise to use PNG when a high image quality is required. You should give mindful consideration to the potential impact on website speed.

JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)

• The balance between image clarity and file size
• Ability to tailor size and quality
• Reduces file size causing a small drop in quality

Our Recommendation: JPEG is a useful format when you want images to load quickly and take up less space, especially for photos where a tiny loss in quality is acceptable.

WebP

• Creates smaller files
• Supports transparency and automation
• There is a good balance between file size and image quality
• It’s developed by Google, and is supported by major search engines and social media sites

Our Recommendation: WebP is great for internet images as it provides superior lossless and lossy compression, which means it allows you to create smaller images without compromising quality. This makes it an ideal format for webpages as it helps to improve website performance by reducing load times.

2. Reduce File Size for Faster Loading Speeds

Have you ever waited for a website to load and bounced off because it took too long? The slow load speed may have been caused by website images with large file sizes. Slow loading times lead users to become impatient and leave. It’s important to compress the images on your website to boost website speed, website performance, and improve on-site SEO.

Create a positive user experience and improve your ranking by compressing your images with the free tools below:

• Bulk Resize Photos
• Gimp
• Tiny PNG
• Compress JPEG

Alternatively, you can download the ‘Tiny Compress‘ or ‘WP Smush It‘ WordPress plugins. They compress images on upload to your site without affecting image quality.

3. Write Alt Text for Image SEO

Alternative text is important for accessibility and SEO. People using a screen reader rely on alt text to describe images on a web page.

Search engines also use alt text to understand the context of a webpage.

You’ll need to make sure the alt text descriptions are relevant, accurately describe the picture, and include the focus keyword of your page. This allows search engines to determine the best image to return a user’s question. For example, “pink-business-card” provides much more information than “IMAGE_201027”.

4. Create SEO Friendly Image File Names

Google will be able to help you rank better if you change your image file name to a name that pairs with the image. The change from random text like “IMAGE_03948” to bright-pink-flower” helps search engines match your image to the subject. It also helps users find what they are searching for.

 5. Resize Images to the Display Dimensions

Optimising your website for speed and user experience requires careful attention to the dimensions of your images. When building a website, the need to resize images to match the display dimensions is crucial. The reason for doing this goes beyond just making things look good. It directly impacts the site’s performance and SEO.

Imagine you take a beautiful picture on your phone but the pixel size is large- 4032 by 3024 pixels. In this example, your website only needs pictures that are 600 pixels wide.

The size difference can slow down your website, resulting in longer load times which impacts user engagement.

An easy way to resize your images is to use tools like Photoshop and Canva. By optimising your images for both SEO and the required dimensions, you pave the way for an enhanced user experience. Not only does it ensure your website visually aligns with your design intent, but it also promotes faster loading times.

6. Create an Image Sitemap

When search engines index your website, they rely on sitemaps to understand the structure and relevance of your content. Image sitemaps provide search engines with specific details about each image like its location, description, title, alt text, and associated metadata.

Creating an image sitemap is an important step in optimising your website for search engines, especially if it contains visual content. They provide search engine crawlers with valuable information about the multimedia assets on your site, enhancing the overall visibility of your content in search results.

This not only helps search engines understand the context of your visual elements but also increases the likelihood of these images featuring in search results. By optimising your image sitemap, you are effectively aligning your website with ‘best SEO practices’, making it more likely for search engines to recognise and prioritise your visual content. This can lead to increased organic traffic and improved visibility for your website.

7. Add Structured Data

Structured data is a powerful tool that enhances the way search engines interpret and present your content. Its like giving search engines a clear map of your content, helping them navigate and understand it better.

One advantage of using structured data is its potential to boost the visibility of your images in search engine results. By tagging images with relevant structured data, you enable search engines to understand the content, context, and purpose of each image on your site. Therefore, increasing the likelihood of your images being displayed prominently in search engine results pages (SERPs).

What are You Waiting for? Start Optimising Your Images Today 

Now you’ve read our hot tips on optimising your images for search engines, check your speed with Google’s speed tester. If it’s running slowly, it might be time for some extra support.

Reach out to our team to learn more about SEO for images to get your website’s speed up to scratch.