Boosting your SEO performance often involves the use of keywords and tags. But the images you use in your content can also have a significant effect on where you rank on search engines.
You’re probably already using visuals in a bid to boost engagement and to help you create more compelling content. But images can also help bring traffic to your site as long as they’re well optimised and appropriately tweaked for maximum SEO performance.
So here are six ways you can make your images work harder so that you’re getting the most out of them.
1. Include alt text
Alt text is simply a short description of your image and helps provide context for your content if the image cannot be viewed for whatever reason. It can also help users with visual impairments as alt text is read out loud by screen readers.
You’re essentially using it to help search engines understand the relevance of the image, and therefore the surrounding content too. The more information you can give search engines, the more likely they will be able to use that to drive qualified traffic to your site.
When writing your alt text, you want to ensure you’re being clear, specific, and succinct. You basically want to describe the image to someone who can’t see it. This might mean you want to include the perspective of the shot too: is it a close-up or shot from a wider angle?
As always with anything SEO-related, you want to avoid keyword stuffing as it can create a bad user experience and your website could be considered spammy.
But not all images need alt text. If your image is purely decorative, you can just leave the alt text blank.
The alt text for this image is: field full of daffodils on a sunny day
2. Optimise the placement of your image
You should always try to place images near relevant text. The surrounding content helps search engines understand what the image is about.
If possible, you should also try to place the most important image (maybe it’s an infographic for example) near the top of your content.
Essentially, you want to provide as much context as possible for your images so that it’s easy to understand its relevance.
3. Think about file size
Loading times are crucial for SEO. Especially when mobile devices are now the most popular way for users to browse the internet.
Not only does having large files mean a clunky user experience where images can take an age to load, but it also means your site is sapping more data from your users than it needs to.
But you don’t want low quality images either right? The key here is compression.
There are sites out there, such as TinyJPG who can compress your images for you. But you can also do it yourself using Photoshop or any other image editing software.
You don’t have to just rely on compression though. You could also resize the image so that it’s closer to the native resolution of your site. You don’t need a 6000x4000px image when your site is running at 1920×1080.
You can find out more about resizing your images here.
4. Use a relevant file name
Search engines will take into account the image filename when they’re trying to understand what the image is about.
So when you’re naming your file, make sure you’re using something descriptive and include any keywords you want to rank for. You should also separate your images with dashes as best practice.
As with many SEO rules though, don’t go over the top. If you name your file using a string of keywords, it will be obvious to the bots that you’re trying to cheat the system. It’s best practice to avoid keyword stuffing.
5. Don’t embed important text into images
You want to avoid placing any important text into your images, especially for page elements such as headings, menu items and captions.
Copy embedded in images cannot be read by text translation tools or search engines. And if the image doesn’t load, then the user could be missing out on crucial information.
To ensure maximum accessibility of your content, keep text outside of your images and provide alt text.
6. Choose an image that’s engaging
This might seem obvious, but it really does matter. After all, have you tried changing any of your images yet to see if it’s producing better results for you? If not, you should.
By choosing an image that engages your audience, you will increase the chances that a user will clickthrough to your content.
Once they do, your images will help determine if they will stick around, read your other content, and maybe learn more about your business along the way. Do this over and over and you’ll begin to build loyalty with your readers.
We know it can feel subjective choosing the right image for your content, but it doesn’t have to be. You can use data-driven best practice to choose the perfect picture.
Conclusion
With these simple steps, it’s easy getting the most out of your images. After all, you’ll want to squeeze as much value out of them as possible. Once you get these steps into your workflow and start seeing improved SEO performance, you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.