Image optimization for SEO is a technique used in your website in such a way that they pop up whenever a user searches for a particular image on the Google. Some people search on the Google images and wonder why their website’s image is not showing up in the search results. It’s because they haven’t done any image optimization. Image optimization technique involves describing the image in such a way that when we search a particular keyword, our image shows up in the search result.
There are few advanced image optimization techniques. We will be giving you a step by step image optimization tutorial.
- Image file name
There are a lot of images available on the internet and you want that your image should also be visible to the customers. In order to ensure that, you need to describe your image properly. Don’t name your image using the name that your camera suggests by default. You need to describe in plain and simple English. Use those words that most people use while searching. The search engines don’t just look for the keywords on the webpage, they also go through the keywords present in your image file name. - Alt Tag and Title Tag
Alt tag is meant to be an alternative information source for disable images in their browsers and those user agents that are simply unable to “see” the images. It should describe what the image is about and get those visitors interested to see it. When you hover over an image, a small dialog box opens up describing your image. The text within that box is termed as title tag. Describing it properly is also important for SEO as the search engines crawl through the alt tags when they can’t render your image properly. While naming the alt tags, always remember to describe tags in plain and simple English like we discussed earlier. Also, remember to keep it short, otherwise search engines might even penalize you for over-optimizing the image.
3. Image Size
The larger the image size, the more time will be taken by your website to load up. On an average, a person waits for 3 seconds on pc and 5 seconds on the mobile for a website to load up. Loading time is the most important factor for any site, as it is considered in Google’s ranking algorithm. Using heavy images will increase the loading time of a website. So, what should you do? The answer is, use Photoshop for editing images and while saving the image use option “Save for Web”. This option will reduce the size of the image while maintaining its quality.
