Key Image SEO Tips You Need to Know as an Online Marketer

Image SEO: Images are often used on articles for blog posts, online magazines or newspapers and those put up on websites.

They come in handy in bringing the article to life, giving it more depth to make it more relatable to the viewers. Images do need to be optimized for the search engine and the end user who is the viewer.

To get the best out of images, you will need to optimize the image for SEO. This is through reducing its size so it’s easily downloadable.

Also give it the correct name and alt text to optimize it for search engines.

Images: To Add or not to Add?

As a writer, blogger or one who comes up with written content for a website, you must have asked yourself this question severally.

Should you or shouldn’t you add images. Well, of course you should put them up together with your article. You can add images to each of your article.

Images help readers to have a better understanding of the article. It gives the words a more interesting feel, and may appeal to people so that they read on and don’t get bored with just words.

Images also allow you to explain what you mean for the readers to visualize it.

For instance, how-to articles with images allow the reader better understanding. They also make your website or social media more enticing.

Choosing an Image

The image you choose to add depends on what your article is about, who it is intended for and where it is placed.

For instance, if your target is teenagers, have images that appeal to them specifically. You can add your own image, or generate another image from different sites.

Own Images

You can have images of your own on the articles. For instance, if the article is for a company website, you can have images of the team behind it to let the readers relate to the company more.

Also, you can come up with your own images such as photographs of those related to the article.

You may even have a planned photo shoot specifically for this purpose, to get images to use for your article, or just choose the most relevant from a list of photos.

The image should complement your article by being relevant to the subject of discussion.

It needs to reflect the topic of the article or be an illustration of information within the article. This is important to allow the image to rank better.

The image is usually optimized for specific keywords thus related texts together with the image would lead to improved rankings.

Alternatives

You do not want to use images of your own? Maybe you just can’t get access to them or want to have something different.

By all means go for it. You can find unique images with a basic search. There are many sites that have collections of different images in different categories such as Flickr and Pinterest.

Find genuine images to go with your articles. You may also use illustrations such as graphs and charts.

These especially come in handy when explaining data, as it offers visual evidence. You can also use animated GIFs which have become more popular today.

Just think of articles you see linked from social media. Most of them use animated GIFs.

If you decide to use animated GIFs, minimize their use on a single article. Having too many GIFs on your post will be distracting for readers due to the movements of the image.

Use very few and space them out enough to give your reader ample time and space to actually read the content without constant interruptions from GIFs.

Preparations

Once you pick the image, you need to prepare it for posting by taking care of the following:

Image SEO Tip #1:  File Name

This would show Google what the image is about. Choose a file name that describes the image and use keywords to enable easier reach for searchers. Get rid of generic numbers and letters as a file name like DHGT3564.jpg.

Image SEO Tip #2:  Scale the Images

You will need to scale images to the size it is to be shown. You can scale it down to reduce loading time. This makes it easier to visit the page, as the site is generally faster.

Image SEO Tip #3:  Reduce File Size and Optimize it

Once you have scaled your image, have it in the smallest file possible. You can do this by removing the EXIF data.

There are tools to perform such tasks like JPEGMini. Check the success of the optimization using tools as well.

Image SEO Tip #4:  Responsive Images

Use these to avoid bad mobile experience where bounce rate increases. Using responsive images is vital for SEO.

Image SEO Tip #5:  Placing the Image

Once you get to the point where you add the image to your article, put it at a strategic place.

The best would be putting it next to related content on the article. This ensures relevance of both the content and the image.

Captions

Images are accompanied by text. These are the captions of the image. The captions are important as they are read most times even more than the actual written content of the article.

When people scan an article, they tend to scan the heading, the image and the caption if available.

This tells you that you need to be extra careful when coming up with captions. You need to use them correctly to tap into the large audience available.

Not all images require captions. Some can stand alone. You need to be able to decide which images require captions and which are good without the captions.

If it requires one, give it one that describes the image well, utilizing keywords.

Alt Text And Title Text

This is the text that is added to an image for the instances when the image fails to load, and is not displayed.

It is descriptive of the image, to ensure the image still puts its message across. Ensure that you add an alt text to the image and that it includes the SEO keyword for that page. The title text may be used to describe the image.

Image Tags

You can use the image for social sharing. Adding the right text image tag enables the image to be included as you share on social media. While sharing image tags on social media, ensure that the image is of good quality.

Alignment

Do try to align your images with the text, such that images stick to one side. Having images on the left and the right of the page may break the flow of the written content.

XML Image Sitemaps

This is the information you avail to Google about the images on your site, by adding image-specific tags to a sitemap. It helps Google to index your images, thus improving your image SEO.

Image SEO – This is the sum of elements. Google can recognize elements in an image, thus you should ensure that they give better user experience and SEO.

So now you have more information on image SEOs, and how to utilize them for your own benefit. Do get to optimize the use of images for your website and get the best out of them.