Images play a crucial role in enhancing the visual appeal and user experience of a website. They help break up text and make content more engaging and easier to digest. High-quality images can convey emotions, tell stories, and provide additional context that words alone might not fully capture. In the competitive digital landscape, where first impressions matter, well-chosen images can significantly impact a visitor’s perception of a website, potentially increasing the time that they spend on the site and their likelihood of returning.
Now, optimising images for SEO is essential because it directly affects a website’s load speed, user experience, and search engine rankings. Search engines like Google consider page load times as a ranking factor, and large, unoptimised images can slow down a website, leading to higher bounce rates. Additionally, optimised images can improve accessibility and help search engines understand the content of a page better. Fortunately, for the newbies in the digital marketing industry, there are numerous foolproof tips for optimising images for SEO to ensure that they contribute positively to a website’s performance and visibility without compromising on quality or user experience. Read on to find out some of these essential tips on how to optimise images for SEO.
1. Pick the Proper Image File Type
Choosing the proper image file type is crucial to make sure that your images are displayed correctly, without blurriness, and are easily visible to users. It is also important to use formats that Google can index properly. Here are the image formats that Google can index:
JPEG: It is compatible with almost all devices and supports a wide range of colours. It preserves image hues well but uses lossy compression, meaning some data is lost, making it less ideal for detailed images like digital photos.
PNG: It is also universally compatible and uses lossless compression, so no data is lost. However, PNG files are typically larger than JPEGs, which can slow down page load times.
SVG: It uses vectors instead of pixels, making it unsuitable for photos due to large file sizes but perfect for logos, diagrams, and animations.
WebP: It is increasingly popular for its ability to reduce image size while maintaining quality. WebP lossy files are 25-34% smaller than JPEGs, and lossless files are 26% smaller than PNGs. However, not all browsers support WebP yet, though this is expected to change soon.
Generally, the image format that works for your site depends on your own preferences. The kinds of images you use on your website and the quality and speed you wish to achieve will determine the format you will choose. That said, when deciding which image file type to use, consider these tips:
1. JPEGs are ideal for screenshots, blog post images, and content where site speed is crucial.
2. PNGs offer better quality and resolution but at the cost of larger file sizes, which can slow down page load times. Use PNGs if you prioritise quality over speed.
3. WebP provides excellent compression without significant loss of quality, making it great for optimising page load speeds and reducing bandwidth usage. It also supports GIF-like animations and PNG-like transparency.
4. SVGs are best for icons and logos since they can be scaled to any size without losing resolution.
2. Resize the Image
It is essential to keep in mind that image size and file size are not the same thing, so there is a need to distinguish them. Image size refers to the dimensions of an image, such as its width and height (e.g., 1050 pixels by 1000 pixels), while file size indicates the amount of storage space it occupies (e.g., 350 KB). Large dimension images can significantly slow down page loading times because the browser must load the entire image, even if it is larger than the site’s maximum display width.
For example, if your blog’s maximum width is 650 pixels and you upload an image that is 5,500 pixels wide, the browser will still download the full-sized image, which can greatly reduce page load speed. Therefore, it is important to resize images to match the intended display size. To do this, you need to determine the maximum width and height for the display. Once you know the correct dimensions, you can then resize your images accordingly so that you can optimise these images for SEO.
3. Optimise the File Name of the Image
Optimising image file names is also necessary for improving a web page’s SEO and the image’s content ranking. To achieve better SEO results, be sure to include relevant, descriptive keywords at the beginning of the file name, separated by hyphens, as search engines do not recognise underscores. Hyphens basically help search engines emphasise specific words, making the file names more understandable for both search engines and humans. For instance, rename “horse123.jpg” to “horse-riding-in-a-meadow.jpg” to make it more descriptive and SEO-friendly. By optimising the file name, you can then optimise the image for SEO.
4. Make Use of Alt-Text
While viewers can interpret the image, search engine spiders require clues. Without alternative text (alt-text), search engines cannot accurately index your image content. Indeed, search engine spiders rely on alt-text to understand and index image content accurately, even if the images fail to load. Moreover, alt-text is also crucial for visually impaired users, as it provides them with context. To optimise images for SEO, you should consider making use of relevant and descriptive alt-texts. An effective alt-text should include brand-relevant information and keywords, offering more detail than the file name, ideally within 10-15 words to convey meaning without keyword stuffing.
5. Do Image Compression
Image compression basically reduces the size of image files, making them load faster and store more efficiently on various devices. The file size of images directly impacts page loading speed; large file sizes can cause delays, frustrating users and potentially driving them away from your site. Additionally, large images increase bandwidth consumption, which is the amount of data transferred between your site and its users. This can strain your web hosting resources and increase hosting costs, as many providers charge based on data transfer or resource usage. Therefore, compressing images before uploading them is essential.
However, compressing images can lead to a loss of quality, depending on the format used. JPEG uses lossy compression, which reduces quality, while PNG uses lossless compression, preserving quality but resulting in larger files. This is where WebP comes in. WebP offers a balance, providing better compression than both JPEG and PNG while maintaining image quality. As much as possible, aim to compress your images to 100 KB or less, but if this is not possible without significant quality loss, compress them as much as you can while keeping them usable.
6. Utilise an Image CDN
An image CDN is a content delivery network that also offers real-time image compression and transformation. It serves two primary purposes: quickly delivering content to global audiences, similar to a traditional CDN, and utilising a worldwide network of caching servers to enhance content delivery speed. Image CDNs basically minimise the image payload, ensuring accurate and instant delivery to every device from the network edge. This enhances page load speeds, boosts SEO rankings, and improves user experience. They focus on optimising, transforming, and delivering images, functioning as an API for accessing and editing images on a website.
The URLs of images from CDNs include details like format, size, and quality, simplifying the creation of image variants for different purposes. Unlike build-time image optimisation scripts, image CDNs generate new versions of images on demand, making them more effective for producing highly customised images for individual clients. This on-the-fly creation of image variants provides greater flexibility and utility compared to pre-optimised images. So, for easier image optimisation, consider utilising image CDNs for your site.
7. Make Sure the Image is Mobile Friendly
The algorithm of Google makes use of mobile-first indexing so that search engine crawlers primarily look at the mobile version of a website. Since Google’s algorithm prioritises this mobile-first indexing, it is important that your images are mobile-friendly. Indeed, to optimise images for SEO is to make it as mobile-friendly as possible. This means ensuring that both your images and website layout are responsive to different devices. While some website templates and builders automatically resize images, you can also specify image sizes based on the device’s width by adding custom CSS code to your site. For this purpose, there are plenty of how-to guides online that can help you learn more about how to make your images responsive for mobile use.
8. Use Unique Images As Much As Possible
Utilising stock photos is okay, but they will not necessarily help increase your search rankings simply because other sites are likely using the same stock photos. As such, always strive to use original images instead of stock photos. Using the same images as other sites in your niche will not help you stand out and will not send strong E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) signals to Google about your site’s credibility. Make sure your images are highly relevant to your content and align with your niche.
For example, if your blog is about traveling to Singapore, avoid using generic images of the Merlion seen on many other blogs. Instead, use unique photos that demonstrate your personal experience and trustworthiness. When improving your rankings, you would not copy and paste content from another site; you would create unique, valuable content. Similarly, stock images will not significantly boost your rankings, but original images can. Unique images might even earn backlinks from other relevant sites, such as an infographic with useful information that others link to in their content. This is what can enhance your site’s backlink profile and potentially lead to higher rankings.
9. Include Image Structured Data
Structured data basically links an image to the page where it appears through markup. It is necessary to add structured data for each instance an image is used, even if the image is reused on different pages. This is because adding structured data to your pages enables search engines to showcase your images as rich results. Moreover, Google Images supports structured data for various types of content, including product images, videos, and recipes. For instance, if an image is accompanied by text like a recipe, Google may add a badge to that image. So, as part of your efforts to optimise images for SEO, do not forget to include image structured data at all times or whenever necessary.
10. Leverage Site Maps
Google describes a site map as a file that lists your site’s web pages, thereby helping Google and other search engines understand your site’s content organisation. Essentially, it is a map of your site’s content. Site maps are crucial for SEO because they inform search engines about your pages and site structure. To ensure search engine crawlers detect every image — whether it is an infographic, meme, photo, or video thumbnail — be sure to include them in your site map. For each image, provide the title, description, URL location, caption, and license information. For videos, include the title, description, URL location, thumbnail URL, and raw video file URL. If your site is on WordPress, you can use tools like Yoast SEO, which automatically adds visual content to a site map.
Conclusion
Optimising images for SEO is undoubtedly vital for enhancing a website’s overall performance and visibility. Properly optimised images contribute to faster load times, which is crucial for retaining visitors and reducing bounce rates. They also improve accessibility, making content more inclusive for users with visual impairments through the use of descriptive alt text. Additionally, search engines can better understand and index a website’s content when images are optimised, thereby leading to improved search rankings. By ensuring images are appropriately sized, named, and described, website owners can significantly boost their site’s SEO, ultimately driving more organic traffic and providing a better user experience. In a digital landscape where competition is fierce, it has become a necessity to optimise images for SEO, as it is a key strategy for maintaining a competitive edge and achieving long-term success.
Ref:
https://backlinko.com/image-seo
https://cloudinary.com/guides/web-performance/8-image-seo-optimization-tips-to-improve-your-search-rankings
