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1. Create a good user experience
2. Optimize the image quality
3. Give your images a relevant file name
4. Make sure to write the Alternate Text (alt)
5. Fill in the TITLE tag
6. Add a description to your images
7. Whenever you can, add a caption to the image
8. Surround the image with related and quality content
9. Use jpg, png or gif formats
10. Watch the size of the images
11. Add structured data
12. Send search engines a sitemap for images
13. Be neat
14. Link build with images
Remember this: what is good for the user is good for Google.
What Google itself already says: "Create pages designed primarily for users, not for search engines."
Remember this: people before algorithms.
When we talk about images (which is why you are in an SEO post for images, right?), keep in mind the following UX principles:
Have you ever seen any pixelated images in Google search results? I doubt it.
Google does not like low quality images (blurred or pixelated), that is why it does not include them in the results.
From Google: “High-quality photos attract users more than blurry and unclear images. Also, in the results thumbnail, if the images are sharp they also attract more users, thus increasing the probability of receiving traffic from these users.”
On behalf of Google and user experience, make sure your images aren't blurry or pixelated.
The name of the image file has to represent the content of the image. Names such as "image24", "caption2" or "Screenshot 2022-05-12 at 11.25.36" are not valid.
The name that you should give your images has to be descriptive (explain what the image is about) and concise –it is not necessary to put “empty words” such as the, and, the…– and it must contain the main keyword of the content. And remember, use hyphens to separate words.
Think that the file name is an indicator of the content of the image, so Google, first hand, will know how to relate your image to a category. The more specific the name, the more chances we have that Google understands our content and can display the image in a better position.
EXAMPLE – In the image below, the title would be “boy-angry-face”.
Google is unable to interpret the information offered by web images – that is, it does not know how to read them. That is why it is so important that we use the ALT (alternative text) attribute so that search engines know what we are talking about. That is, the text that describes the images.
The ALT tag is the text that search engines use to know what an image is displaying. In addition, it is the text that is displayed in case the browser cannot display the image –so, if you cannot see the image, at least you will be able to read the ALT text, to know what it is about-.
And also the text that screen readers will read aloud for people with some kind of vision problem.
In the ALT attribute we must write a concise description of the image with the keywords you want to position your page. As Google tells us: “focus on creating content that is useful and rich in information, that uses keywords appropriately, and that matches the content of the page. Do not include too many keywords in the alt attributes, as it causes a bad user experience and can cause your site to be considered spam.
EXAMPLE – “Little boy makes angry face”
Every image must have a title that introduces it. The TITLE tag text is what will be displayed when you hover over the photo. It must be descriptive and contain the keyword with which you want to position yourself.
Also, in image search results, this title will appear below the image, so that users better understand the context of the image and decide whether to click on it or not.
EXAMPLE – “Girl eating cotton candy and holding toothbrushes in her hand.”
To improve the positioning of an image, you must add a description of it. This description has to be more literal and longer than the ALT attribute.
Although there is not a great correlation between writing image captions and an increase in SEO ranking of the web, it is essential that you add captions to your images to help your readers know what the web page is about quickly.
It is one of the most relevant factors in terms of improving the SEO of your website. You must surround your images with content that adds value, is of quality and is related to the images. That is, the theme of the image must match the text that surrounds it.
This text must contain keywords, phrases in bold or titles and headings, as they will increase the relevance of the image.
The best formats to do SEO for images are the most typical: .jpg, .png. and .gif, so feel free to use them. Do not upload images with rare formats such as .bmp or .tiff because you will not be doing Google or your positioning any favors.
JPG – ideal for images with details and many colors, although it is a compression format that loses quality to reduce size. However, its quality is more than enough for websites.
PNG – ideal for flat images or images with large white spaces –such as screenshots, logos, etc-. It has higher quality than .jpg.
GIF – we will only use it for animated images.
The loading speed of a website is a very important factor in the positioning that Google is going to give. Among other factors, heavy images are responsible for slowing down a website, which is why you should reduce your images as much as possible without losing quality.
Although WordPress and other CMS will resize the image once uploaded, do not rely on it. Get used to reducing your image to the exact measurements you need before uploading it to your blog/web/ecommerce, because when you simply insert an image and change its height and weight in the CMS to make it smaller, the browser downloads the large image first to later show it in the reduced size.
And, always always always, compress the images before uploading them.
The ideal size that web images should have would be 70kb-100kb (or less), although we know that it is very difficult to achieve this. Simply try to reduce the size of your image as much as possible, always taking care of its quality.
You can use Compressor.io, ILoveIMG, JPG-Optimizer or Image Compressor or BeFunky tools to compress your images.
Why? Well, because Google Images can display your images as rich snippets and include a featured badge.
In this way, you are providing users with essential information about your page. Google Images supports structured data of the following types:
- Product
- Video
- Prescription
Of course, you have to follow the general structured data guidelines, as well as the specific guidelines for your type of structured data (product, video, recipe). Otherwise, they may not be included when displaying a rich result on Google Images.
All the images that appear on your website have to be in the search engine index so that they can appear in the search, that is why, if the search engine does not find your image files, it is impossible for it to register them.
You should create a sitemap specifically for images as this will help search engines find and index your images. This file includes the URL of each of the images that appear on your website, the title, the license and the caption.
If you don't know what we're talking about, don't worry. The SEO optimization plugin by Yoast already includes the images within the XML Sitemaps function without you having to do anything.
Get used to ordering your images and saving them all in the same folder on the server, called /images/. This small detail makes the Googlebot (GoogleBot) work faster.
The more links pointing to the image of your website, the more relevance and popularity it will receive.. Just as you try to get quality links when you carry out a Linkbuilding strategy, do the same but with image platforms such as Pinterest or Flickr, to get incoming links to your website through photographs.
What do you think? Did you already follow all the SEO tips for images or have you learned something new?
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