Steps to Optimize Images for Search Engines

Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, might seem complicated and abstract, but it's really pretty straightforward:

Every single piece of content on the internet is a link (in between pieces of content).

Google was built on the principle that the content with the most links from high-quality sites would be the most likely to rank.

On-page SEO includes a wide range of factors, including image SEO, based on the quality and quantity of a page's inbound links. That's what our article today is about.

Image SEO: what does it mean?

It involves optimizing your website's images so that search engines can easily "read" them and find them, resulting in increased visibility and ranking for your content. You can improve your image SEO by using alt text and keywords in image file names as well as optimizing image type, size, load time, and alt text.

However, image SEO is not a neglected part of on-page SEO, and it is important in spite of this. It is true that, if you don't pay attention to your image SEO, it can sink your page's ability to gain links, increase its index, and ultimately drive valuable organic traffic if you aren't careful.

There are a few easy steps you can take to improve the SEO of your images:

Reduce the size of images by using a compressor
Use next-generation formats for serving images
Optimize your website's images by scaling them
Image assets that can be linked to the original content
The alt text, caption, and title of your images should be optimized
Publish your images on social media
Images can be lazy-loaded by using lazy loading

To make sure your images are fully optimized for search, we've compiled a list of our top seven must-implement image SEO tips.

1. Reduce the size of images by using a compressor

Page ranking and traffic are heavily influenced by site speed, which is the single most important component of image SEO. In addition to impacting a user’s ability to move from page to page along your conversion path, site speed is also a ranking factor. A slow page will not be viewed favorably by Google. That’s where image compression comes in.

Insight is a feature that allows you to test the speed of any URL on your site. It gives you a detailed breakdown of what's affecting the speed of the page.

The largest contributor to slow page speed is improperly sized images, so image compression is a crucial part of image SEO as well.

The images on your page that are the biggest offenders on your page will be displayed under the requisite tab in your PageSpeed Insights report, along with the amount of space you can save by compressing them. In addition to compressing images one at a time, you can also use plugins/tools geared for your CMS (for example, Smush for WordPress) to bulk compress all the images on your site using a tool like TinyPNG.

2. Next-generation image formats are supported

In your PageSpeed Insights report, you'll also see a recommendation to serve images in next-generation formats.

This article covers JPEG 2000, JPG XR, and WebP. You don't need to feel bad if you're not familiar with these formats because they aren't as ubiquitous as JPG or PNG. Even though JPG and PNG are still the most popular image formats, newer formats like JPEG 2000 have proven more effective. If you encode your images in these formats rather than the old ones, you'll benefit from faster loading times and less data usage on mobile devices.

Many free online converters are available for you to use if you want to serve images in next-generation formats.

3. Optimize your images for your website by scaling them

It depends on your CMS and the format of the page on which you're uploading the image whether the image is the right size (and we're talking dimensions, not file size). You should check out your CMS' dimensions best practices before uploading images (Shopify, for example, recommends using 2048 x 2048 pixels for square product photos). Your CMS might have automatically resized an image to fit your content even if it looks like it fits perfectly. When you resize an image, the dimensions are corrected for display, but the file size does not decrease. Generally speaking, images with more pixels will have larger file sizes. So you need to figure out what size is optimal for your site and crop images before you upload them to ensure you're using the correct images sizes. If that seems like an arduous process—well, it can be if you're sourcing images from all over the internet. You'll be well served to find a standard size that's suited to your site if you're downloading stock images, or outsourcing product images to a designer.

4. Content creation for original images

You can easily size stock photos—the majority of images you'll find on Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, and other vendors come in sizes compatible with most websites. However, stock photos aren't always as effective as original, branded creative. The kind of images that get shared on social media and searched for via reverse image searches are graphs based on internal data or images of your product in action.

The most important thing: Images that make your page original and valuable to your users are unique and compelling. When Google experts are asked for a prescription on how to achieve strong SEO, or how to react to a recent change in Google's algorithm that has resulted in a drop in ranking, they always say the same thing: Create pages that are valuable to your audience above all else. The best way to help your users get the best experience from your pages is to use images that make it easier for them to read.

5. Don't hold back on titles, captions, and alternative text

The amount of information Google can access when determining which image to return for an image query is limited. At the very least, less information than it has access to when indexing whole pages. In order to optimize your image, you must give Google as much information as possible about it in the space you are given. This can be done in three main ways:

If your server doesn't load the image or if your screen reader doesn't work, alt text will still appear on the page).

When it comes to ranking, alt text is the primary way Google knows what your image is—so it's essential. In order to optimize a page, include the target keyword and any ancillary keywords relevant to that image, and eliminate any language that is not descriptive (articles, etc.).

Images' titles have been subject to much debate, but Google does use them when ranking images in image search to determine how to display them based on their relevance.
In regards to captions, Google says: “Google extracts information from the content of a page, including captions and image titles, about the subject matter of an image.” Therefore, Google will be more likely to determine what the image represents by placing it near relevant text. Your image will be adequately and contextually described if you use captions.

6. Integrate social sharing seamlessly

I would like to talk to you about Open Graph tags and/or Twitter Cards. These tags are embedded in the HTML code of your page and guarantee that images and descriptive snippets will appear correctly when someone shares it on Facebook or Twitter. In order to drive traffic and strong social signals to your website, this is crucial if your images want to gain traction on social media.

Alternatively, you can try mock posting your page to Twitter or Facebook to see if it populates correctly. If you're unsure if these elements are present in your source code, you can look for them in your source code. Rather than showing them a single link, you can present them with a large, clickable image card with a description of your page to your friends and followers.

In addition to your CMS, you will need to implement Open Graph tags on your home page as well. For example, BigCommerce provides open graph fields on the back end of all product listings (unfortunately, your home page won't have one).

These fields can be found in Yoast (a great SEO plugin for WordPress users). It's a good idea to make sure that all of your most important and traffic-heavy pages are also shareable.

7. Don't be afraid to try lazy loading

In addition to being catchy, lazy loading can make your page load faster since it doesn't load images below the fold until the user scrolls down. By loading images below the fold either as needed or after the primary content has finished loading and rendering, lazy loading can drastically speed up loading long pages with many images below the fold. Those are some of the best endorsements you can get.

When you run a page speed analysis on your own site, you may find that Google recommends lazy loading.

Google is telling you that lazy loading can be useful in this situation. If you use WordPress, there are some plugins you might want to try. If you don't use WordPress, you might want to check out Google's guidelines for lazy loading.

The importance of image SEO cannot be overstated!

You can implement these seven low-hanging image SEO action items on your site with the time and expertise you have at hand. You don't have to use all of these tips, but you should certainly try to use as many of them as possible. Adding search-friendly alt text to images or using a free tool to compress images is easier than hard coding Open Graph tags, for instance. Take a look at your strategy, decide what's most important, and then move forward!

Got questions? Visit us @ www.sirkle.com and we’re happy to help.