A website is a digital asset of a company. As a business owner, if you’re confused about how you can make an appealing website. Is it a good idea to use visual content on websites? Yes, it’s always a good idea to use images on your website. It makes your website catchy and appealing.
Human brains are wired to process visual content more effectively than plain text. It also allows viewers to process complex information easily. Images also have a lasting effect on the memory of the user. People are more likely to remember the visual information.
Using optimized images for SEO can benefit businesses in increasing visibility on search engines and improving website ranking on Google search engines.
What is Image SEO?
SEO is a practice used to improve the visibility of a website on search engine result pages (SERP). Businesses should focus on investing in SEO to improve the ranking of their website and to build an online presence. Various types of SEO techniques are used by businesses.
To maximize the impact of SEO, a combination of two or more techniques can also be used. As we are all aware, infographics capture more attention than simple text, can convey complex information effectively, and are easy to remember.
Thus, they are preferred over simple text while the website interface is being designed. Image SEO focuses on using optimized images on the website so they don’t negatively affect the performance of the website. SEO graphics are images relevant to the website content, have meaningful descriptions, captions, and tags. It helps to improve the site’s performance and increase the ranking of your website on search engines.
8 Easy Steps to Make Your Website Image SEO Friendly
Let’s discuss how you can optimize the images and use them effectively to improve search engine ranking. 8 easy steps to make your website image SEO friendly.
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Use Images Consistently
Use high-quality images on every page of your website. Images provide a better understanding of your products and services. Images grasp user attention and keep them engaged. Search engines rank websites with visual content and images higher than simple text websites. Always use images on every page of your website to make your website attractive and improve user experience.
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Use Correct Image
Although it’s necessary to use images on every page of your website, it doesn’t mean that you can pick out any image from the internet and use it on your website. Using a high-quality and right image is really important to maximize its impact. The image should relate to your website or the article you are writing for your website. Position your image in the place where it is most related to the text. It will help users to understand the context of the text by just viewing the image. For example, you offer digital marketing services, use an image on your website that conveys your message and is relevant to what your services are about. See the image below for reference
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Use Captions
Use correct names and captions for your images. While naming the image file may seem a simple and non-important detail, it plays a significant role in SEO, use relevant and meaningful words. The name of the image should explain what the image is about. Avoid using names like “image123”, “xyz123”, etc. Viewers scan the articles by looking at the captions of the images. Captions also allow Google to read the image files easily and understand their context.
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Use the correct format
Use the right format of images on your site. JPEG and PNG files are the most popular and the most widely accepted types of images, and they are quite suitable for the majority of websites. JPEG is the best option when the picture or photo is large, and you do not want to compromise the quality of the picture to a considerable extent, whereas PNG should be used when you require the picture or photo to have transparency rather than a solid background.But currently, Google suggests that one should use WebP as the image format of choice. WebP is a new type of the format offered by Google that offers high-quality pictures with much smaller files, which will assist enhance the speed of the page and the overall SEO functionality. Images that are loaded more quickly will also enhance user experience and have a positive effect on your search results.
When you are working with images inside inline SVG ( Scalable Vector Graphics ), remember that in most cases, Google treats an SVG file as a piece of code and not a regular image, so it may not necessarily index it correctly. In order to achieve optimal results, you can go with the idea of converting your JPEG and PNG files into WebP with the help of free online services. This will enable you to maintain quality and save file sizes, making your website quicker, more efficient, and in accordance with Google’s best practices. -
Use Compressed Files:
Have you ever encountered a website during the process of uploading an image that states that you cannot upload because of the size of your file, more than 5MB, or because your file is too large to be uploaded? This is due to the fact that optimized websites place restrictions to ensure that the websites perform and are fast.
To optimize the results of SEO, the size of images on the websites should preferably be less than 100 KB. This is because smaller image sizes will greatly increase the speed of page loads, user experience, and assist the crawler of the search engine to maneuver around your site effectively. Image SEO relies on compressed files.
They not only increase the speed of the websites but they also optimize crawl budget, which enables the search engines to index more pages efficiently. Having lightweight images makes your site work well in general. Online tools can easily compress images before you upload them to your website. But compression does not imply compromising quality; it should be the goal to get the most out of compression by the size/quality ratio.
Imagify and Compressor.io are among the tools that help one to easily compress files without compromising the quality of the files significantly. Moreover, this tool can be automated by a number of SEO plug-ins, such as ShortPixel, WebP Express, and Mattplugins.
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Use Responsive Images:
Improperly scaled and nonresponsive images can negatively impact the ranking of your website; responsive images are essential for SEO. Ask your developer to use the srcset attribute to make responsive images for different devices. Use responsive images for different devices. You can make your website design responsive by using WordPress or bootstrap etc. Different plugins can be used for creating responsive images, such as Adaptive Image and Responsify WP.
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Add ALT text:
Add alt text to all the images. Alt text is a text alternative used for images to make them understandable for search engines. Alt text makes your website more accessible. You can also add relevant keywords in alt text for improved SEO.
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Add Images Sitemaps
Adding images directly to your sitemap helps the Google search engine crawler to index your website and increase the chance of high ranking on SERPs. You can add image URL, metadata, tags, captions, and titles to your image sitemap, which can also be useful for indexing and crawling. Image sitemaps are helpful for optimization, increasing accessibility, efficient indexing, and improved SEO.
Impacts of Image SEO On a Website
Images are important for any website due to viewers’ preference for high-quality and visual websites. Nobody wants to read long paragraphs with boring text. Infographics are easy to remember and are engaging. However, if images are not optimized, they can negatively impact your website. Let’s discuss now how image SEO can impact your website’s performance.
Website Speed
Using heavy image files on your website directly affects the speed of your website; it slows down the website. Page loading speed is critical for SEO and a key factor in ranking a website. Slow websites have a poor user experience and have a negative impact on the performance of your website.
Search Traffic
Using relevant and optimized images not only increases your ranking in search engine results pages but also shows your website in image searches. Google search engines have a separate tab named “Images” under the search bar specifically for image searches. You can improve website performance and traffic by diverting audiences to your website through image searches.
User Experience
Image Search engine optimization focuses on using the correct size for your image files, adding meaningful captions, SEO supported image descriptions, naming images for SEO, and using trending tags are best practices for image SEO. It enhances the user experience on your website.
Bounce Rate
The benefits of using optimized images for SEO can decrease the bounce rate of your website. That means people are more likely to spend more time on your website, which not only improves SEO ranking but also increases the engagement rate of your website.
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Conclusion:
Image SEO can be beneficial for your website if used carefully, but it can also have a negative impact if not used properly. By using optimized images for SEO with other SEO techniques, you can improve the progress of your website as well as its ranking on Google and other search engines. SEO may seem heavy on the pocket at first, but it has long-term and lasting benefits.
By implementing SEO-friendly images, you can enjoy various benefits: getting organic traffic on your website, improving the performance and efficiency of your website, reaching a wider audience, and getting more conversions.
You can use online tools to identify the performance of your website. There are some free online tools that can be used for image SEO purposes and tracking the website performance, such as Google PageSpeed Insights and YoastSEO, that can make your Image SEO journey prosperous.
