Boost Your Website’s SEO: A Guide to Image Optimization
Why Image Optimization Matters
Optimizing your images is key to your website’s SEO. Not only does it improve loading speeds and provide a better user experience, but it also plays a major role in your keyword strategy.
When search engines rank pages, their algorithms look at a variety of factors, but the overall goal is to give the users the best webpages that relate to their search queries. By optimizing your photos, you are showing search engines that your website isn’t slow, and you are telling search engines what your page is about.
Speed: If your images are too large, they can slow down your website. If your website is too slow, users are more likely to click away from it, increasing your bounce rate. This also hurts your SEO because search engines can see that people are bouncing right off of your website, which doesn’t look good!
Text: Yes, the text connected to your images matters. It helps with accessibility and tells the bots what the photo is and how it relates to the page and overall message.
Watch me demonstrate optimizing a bulk set of photos for a webpage in this set-by-step guide.
Step 1: Rename and Resize Your Image Files
This first step can be done in any photo editing tool you like to use, and it doesn’t even have to be fancy. I just to it in Preview. You need to name your image file because having IMG8756dfrs800s.jpg does NOT do you any favors. While you have the file open, you can also resize it. Let’s dig in with how to do each properly…
Best Practices for Naming Files
When naming your file, follow these best practices:
Keep it short. Aim for 5 words or less.
Keep it descriptive. Make sure that the name matches what’s in the photo.
Include your keyword. What keyword are you targeting for this page? How can you include it (or at least part of it) in your filename? If you don’t yet have your keyword, start here!
Use lowercase letters only.
Use hypens to seperate words. For example, “blue-circle-pattern-fabric.jpg”.
Avoid special characters. Only use letters, numbers, and hypens.
Importance of Image File Size
Usually the images that we want to use for our website start out way larger than necessary for people visiting your site on their desktops, tablets, and most commonly, their phones. Having too large of images, expecially if you have multiple images on your page, can really slow down your site. People (and search engines) do not like slow sites, so always make sure you have proper sizing. But you also don’t want your images so small that they don’t look good. When you resize your image files, you need to take the purpose of your image into consideration. Here are some tips for resizing your images.
If you image is just a small part of a page on your site, it likely doesn’t need to be large. Aim to resize it to 100KB or less. For large images or backgrounds, aim to keep it below 1 MB.
Always zoom in to check the quality of your sizing. Some pictures will look blurry at 100KB while others still look clear at 70KB. Consider how large the image will be on a desktop on your web page when you zoom in to check for image quality.
Always test your website after you publish to make sure that your images are still up to quality standards.
Step 2: Compress Your Images
There is only so much you can resize your images before they start looking pixelated. Once you get them resized, but still looking good, you have one more step to get that file size even smaller. Compression. There are plenty of free tools online to compress your images by removing or rewriting date and making the file size smaller without losing quality.
I like to use Tiny-IMG. Simply click on “Optimize Images” and then upload or drag and drop your image(s) onto their platform, and watch the magic. Your file(s) will be reduced as much as possible without losing quality - often times coming out half the size! Then you just need to download the new files, and fix the name, which will now have a string of characters added to the end like blue-circle-pattern-fabric4897ydf97y980x.jpg.
Step 3: Upload with Alt Tags
What are Alt Tags
Alt tags are descriptions of images on a webpage that can appear if the image doesn’t load. They can help with accessibility for visually impaired users and they can help search engines understand what the image and page is about - hello SEO!
How to Write Effective Alt Tags
Always include alt tags for your photos, and follow these tips to make them effective in your SEO.
Describe what is in the image, but don’t go into too much boring detail.
Include a keyword that you are optimizing your web page for if it fits.
Include your city or neighborhood if it’s applicable and you are a local business.
Include how it is relevant to your web page. For example, “Quilting fabric with a blue circle pattern and a yellow backgound perfect for a quilting class project at Wyldwood Creative in Renton”.
Conclusion
Optimizing your photos is such an important step in improving your SEO. Make sure to do it WHILE you are creating pages and blogs on your site, and if you have a bunch of pages on your website that aren’t yet optimized, go back and make those changes to improve speed, user experience, and your search engine optimization.
Ready to enhance your website’s SEO? Contact me today for a personalized SEO audit and image optimization strategy tailored to your business needs!