Image optimization is a key factor to optimize a website for search engines. An optimized image has the potential to rank higher on Google Images and can bring more visitors to a website. Today's post will solely be focused on image SEO and by the end of this post, you will learn how to optimize your website strongly to rank high on search engines through images!
Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
Images are an important part of any blog post. Without enough visuals, users will get bored and leave your site without reading all of your content. Images are a great way to keep the user glued to your website for a long time. In fact, if you're planning on monetizing your website to earn passive income, images will play a crucial role in it. No advertiser wants to place ads on a boring website, the right images can increase your chances of being accepted by an advertising company!
Without further ado, let's dive into today's post and learn how easily images can be optimized for SEO.
Use Compressed Images and Lazy-Load
Images are a great way to keep your readers interested but having a lot of images can sometimes backfire. The size of an image makes an impact on the loading speed of a website and if you're using images that are heavy, readers might want to move towards your competitors for a better experience.
To make sure your images are optimized for search engines, it is suggested that you use compressed images that have a small file size. Moreover, you can use lazy loading to load your images only when a reader reaches them instead of loading all images on a page at once.
These techniques will help you monetize your images for SEO and will improve the user experience of your readers.
Use ALT Text for Your Images
ALT stands for alternative. An ALT text is used in cases where images fail to load. So for example, if you uploaded an image of a white kitten and you wrote an alt text "cute white kitten", this text will be displayed instead of your image if the image fails to load.
Images can fail to load for a number of reasons and the most common ones are listed below:
- The visitor has a slow internet connection.
- The visitor has turned off the image-loading feature on the browser.
- The visitor is using a data saver mode.
If one of the conditions mentioned above is true, images will not load when your website is being viewed. Instead, an alt text will be displayed telling the user what the image was about. We suggest you use an SEO-friendly alt text which might improve your rankings on Image search engines.
Use XML Sitemap for Images
Yes, you read it right. XML sitemaps are not just directories used for URLs. XML sitemaps can be created for images present on your website to help Google and other search engines identify them. Google itself has talked about image sitemaps so for sure they're important. Image sitemaps allow search engines to discover new and old images on a website but keep in mind, not all search engines support XML sitemaps. You can learn more about image sitemaps here.
Use Keywords in Image Captions
Image captions are a great way of telling search engines what your images are about. By using keywords in your image captions, you have a better chance of ranking higher and attracting more visitors to your website. The right keywords can be used for establishing a strong SEO for images.
To find popular keywords you can use tools like Semrush to find relevant suggestions for your images based on your blog topic. Now say, for example, you're writing a post on supercars and you're using an image of a Lamborghini in your post. You can write the following caption "Lamborghini, one of the best supercars". When a user will search Google for the "Best supercars" next time, he will be likely to discover your image and might even go on to read your article in detail.
Ending Note
Images optimization plays a key role in the success of any website. Optimizing images for the web is one of the hidden secrets behind gaining organic traffic through the usage of visuals on a website. As a beginner, you should keep your focus on using creative images that will grab the user's attention and might even go viral on social media if they're worthy enough.
Without images, a website is incomplete and is like a boring course book that drives readers away. To improve the user experience for your readers and retain them, you should use as many relevant images as you can. However, you should balance the textual content along with the visual content to gain optimal results.
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