7 Image Optimization Tips You Need To Learn Now!The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a core component of the digital marketing. And, when it comes to the On-Page SEO, how can you forget about the Image optimization?If you are a blogger or an internet marketer, then you might know the value of SEO.Without optimizing your website for both On-Page as well as Off-Page, you will rarely get a chance to rank in SERP.There are 200+ primary factors in Googleu2019s search engine algorithm to decide the web page ranking. Though many people make sure that their pages are highly optimized for search engines, itu2019s almost impossible to know the exact pattern of search engine algorithm. Still, there is a scope to rank for any keyword using some legit tactics available.According to Googleu2019s latest search engine update, it wants to show the most relevant and helpful resources in the SERP. So, crafting your content closer to the searcheru2019s query and optimizing correctly for search engines can give enormous ROI to your efforts.When you think about the search engine optimization, especially On-Page SEO, donu2019t forget to optimize your images too.Despite regular search queries which are mostly for articles and blog posts, a lot of people are searching for the images also.Hereu2019s a deal.If you have optimized your images and they start ranking, you will get a lot of visitors from the image search only. And, compared to regular website and blog articles, you can achieve quick results with images by showing a little creativity and unique angle of your mind.So, I have decided to write an article on Image optimization for SEO, and here I have mentioned many simple tips and tricks to optimize your blog images.Is There A Need For Image Optimization?There is a need for optimizing images. Donu2019t you think so?Youu2019ll find many reasons for image optimization. The relevant and attractive visuals improve the audience engagement and on-page time which helps in reducing the bounce rate.With images, you can serve your contents in a better way and save tons of time in writing the text copy. The highly optimized images help to boost your SEO score especially by improving the website loading speed significantly.These are only a few benefits of image optimization, and you can get much more by optimizing the images on your website.Image search has a less competition compared to the regular web searches. With a proper optimization, you can get higher ranking in image search.You can also get massive traffic from photo sharing sites like Pinterest and Instagram.The highly relevant and attractive Images, especially infographics can improve the on-page duration and decrease the bounce rate.If you allow and someone uses your images, you may get credit or backlink to your site helping to boost your Off-Page SEO. (Still, there are some instances like hotlinking or serving content over CDN may crush your SEO, so that take care of your images in a proper way.)How To Choose A Right Image For Your Blog?Some codes like custom CSS will help you to reduce the use of images to minimize the page size and thus improve the page loading time. Still, almost every blogger uses the images in his article.Here Iu2019m going to show you how to optimize images for SEO as well as human visitors. I want to share some useful resources with you to get free images and stock photos as well as the design suits which are helpful even you are a newbie and not familiar with graphic design.Finding the Right Images for Your BlogWhen it comes using images in a blog article, many people search Google and use some common images which are used hundreds of times. Some of these pictures may have copyrighted, and search engines can penalize you for using these images.You may also face the problem by using duplicate content, and even you are resizing your images, Googleu2019s search engine algorithm is quite smart which now comes with features like AI. So, never game the system to show your over-smartness to the tech-giant that is working on the driverless car in the Silicon Valley.Itu2019s better to pick the images from resources that are giving copyright-free images and stock photos. Still, you want to use Google, use the advanced search option with proper usage rights.Ignoring these simple things may put you in big trouble causing a loss of ranking, traffic, and revenue.If you donu2019t know the resources to get free images and stock photos, here are the 45+ Best Sites for Downloading Royalty-Free Images & Stock Photos. I personally use and recommend Pixabay that has a database of around a million images.You can also use some premium photo sharing sites like Shutterstock where you can buy images to use in your blog post.There are many eye-catching images available through free as well as premium channels still I prefer creating my images.Creating Your Images:Using free images and stock photos may be an easy way to deal with image needs, but you might have noticed that hundreds of bloggers frequently use these pictures. Sometimes, you may not find the perfect image to add in your article where you need to create the custom images.Capturing the snaps with your digital camera or smartphone is one option when the object is live otherwise you need to work on the computer creating the custom images according to your preference.You may use design tools like Canva, Form W 3ss Photoshop, Pixlr or even simple as Microsoft PowerPoint. Some of them work online while others can be utilized offline perfectly to create the custom images.By doing this, you will have all the rights to the images you create, and no one will dare to bother you anyways unless you have used the trademarked or offensive visuals in your images.For creating custom images, I prefer Canva. With an intuitive user interface and the mind-blowing features like cool fonts, tons of free design elements including images, shapes, lines, illustrations and a series of pre-made design templates Canva helps users to create anything in your mind.Simple drag and drop feature and support to various file formats like JPG, PNG, and even PDF helps to build you any custom image with minimum efforts. No matter whether you are a graphic designer or not.Featured Download: The complete list of free graphics designing tools (for non-techies) for creating beautiful blog post images within just a few clicks. (Click Here To Download Your Copy).How to Optimize Images for Search Engines?1. Choose A Perfect Title/File NameJust like other digital contents images also have a file name. So, make sure you have a named the images properly before uploading to your site.Many people just download the images from other sources and upload to their sites. They may think image title/file name does not make any sense.Choosing a perfect name for your images help a lot in the search engine optimization. Using a keyword-rich image title, you can get a chance to rank your images at a prominent position in search results.Suppose, you are writing an article about low budget hotels in Goa. Itu2019s better to name your images using long tail keywords like u201clow-budget-hotels-in-Goau201d etc.You can exclude the stop words and the dashes between the image title. If you are using WordPress, the space between two consecutive is automatically replaced by a dash in image URL. But, making your image title relevant to your copy and readable to both search engines as well as human visitors is more beneficial to you.You can write titles of your images in different ways but selecting a perfect one makes sense when itu2019s possible.However, if you are using so many images in a single article, donu2019t stuff keywords in image titles. Itu2019s always better to keep a distance from Black-Hat SEO.Look at below and decide which format of image title you want to use on your website.This is one of the low budget hotels in GoaWrong format: u201cxhjhsk178.jpgu201dOkay Format: u201clowbudgethotelsinGoa.jpgu201dPerfect Format: u201clow-budget-hotels-in-goa.jpgu201d2. Use Appropriate Image DimensionsI have already mentioned earlier that site loading speed is a crucial factor in SEO. Not only Google but people also donu2019t like the slow loading sites. Eventually, they may abandon your site only due to poor site speed.Now, you may think what the relation between site speed and images is.Am I right?Yes, images affect website loading time. The graphical components especially images in the most cases hold around 30-70% of the total page size. So, using the high-resolution images unnecessarily which take considerable time to load affecting overall page speed and SEO.Itu2019s better to define the dimensions and quality of images before uploading to your site. The high-resolution images unnecessarily increase file size so that resizing images to required width and height is beneficial.How To Set Image DimensionsFor the blog articles, the image size should be minimum 250 X 250px. You can upload even smaller images but not giving the great feeling as a visual component. Moreover, if someone wants to share your images on the social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or pin to their Pinterest board, minimum resolution matters a lot. Still, this is not a recommendation, and you can set any size as your lower limit because some icons or logos may be smaller than this size.According to me, 750 X 420px (16:9) is a good resolution you can commonly use for multiple platforms. Again, itu2019s not a final because there are various platforms recommending different image dimensions. For normal usage, itu2019s fine to stick to my suggestion.However, if you have downloaded the images with large dimensions, resize or crop them before uploading to your site that lowers the file size. Donu2019t resize them after uploading to your website because when the web page loads in the browser, the original size remains same even you have resized the image and does not help in improving page speed.If you have downloaded a stock image and itu2019s too large in dimensions, then it is better to resize it and then upload it. Donu2019t upload the image in its original size and resize it using the height and width parameters of your post editor.You can use simple tools like PicResize or even the Paint application on your PC.3.Image Optimization By Compressing To The Smaller File SizeWhen you upload the high-quality stock images directly to your website, it adds a lot of pressure on your web server to load those images. High-quality images generally have larger file size (triple digit in KB or in MB) that increases overall web page size resulting in reduced loading speed.By resizing the images, you can make images smaller in size but what about the images which already have a resolution around 500 X 500px?You simply canu2019t resize them to even smaller dimensions to reduce the file size; you need to compress them.Compressing the images will decrease the file size significantly (up to 80% of their original file size without losing too much quality).Compress JPEG Images Online and TinyPNG u2024 Compress PNG images while preserving transparency are a couple of useful resources for image compression. These sites compress images without any distortion or making them pixelated/blurry. I personally use these sites to compress images and get around 60-75% of compression without seeing much difference in the picture quality.Important:If your website is dedicated to providing the high-quality wallpapers or similar purpose, then compressing the images and uploading to your site wonu2019t help you alone. People wants high-quality images, but when you compress these images, they lose quality. With smaller dimensions, it wonu2019t make any considerable difference, but the zooming in or scaling to large canvas can make them pixelated.If your clients use these images for outdoor advertising like Media flex or ad banners, then it would be an irritating experience.To solve this problem, you can simply upload your images to the external file hosting sites like Dropbox and link to the image thumbnails on your website.When someone clicks on the image thumbnail for download, he will be redirected to the external file hosting server where you have stored your images.There are few other ways to deal with this issue like buying more powerful resources or using CDN to distribute static contents, but the method I have mentioned here is better than almost all of them.4. Using ALT Text ProperlyThe ALT text itself describes the reason for using it. The ALT text or alternative text provides the information about your image files. Search engines are not able to read your images completely without adding relevant information like title, ALT text or description.When you add appropriate alternative text to your images, search engine spiders can better understand your images and rank them accordingly for requested queries. It means you can lose potential traffic if you havenu2019t optimized your images for ALT text.Sometimes, images do not appear for whatsoever reason like poor rendering, etc. then the ALT text will be displayed at the place of the image. So, make sure you have a perfectly optimized post with alternative text that is related to your copy.How To Choose The ALT TextNow, you know what the advantages of using the ALT text are, but you may be thinking about how to choose it.The ALT text is the best place to optimize your images around the focused keyword. By adding your desired keyword in the alternative text, you can increase the chances of getting a higher position in image search results.However, you need to know how to choose and use ALT text wisely. Random optimization practices like keyword stuffing or using irrelevant keyword donu2019t make any sense. Another important thing, avoid using duplicate alternative text and make sure they are wildly different than each other.Use the image which is the most relevant to your content and then enter an appropriate keyword as ALT text is a right way for image optimization.You can use a long tail version of your keyword or the phrase that people search in Google. Donu2019t add dashes between two consecutive words for ALT text. Just put your keyword or phrase as u201clow budget hotels in Goau201d and thatu2019s it.Using the single word (broad) or a paragraph in the place of alternative text wonu2019t help you that much compared to proper 4-6 words version.How to Add ALT texts in the Images?The simple way to insert the alternative text to your images is from the Media Library of your website. You can directly put an appropriate keyword there as an ALT text.When you upload your images, try to fill all necessary data like Title, ALT Text, Caption, and Description, etc. You can add this information even later by going to Media Library.You can also add the ALT text from the editor of your website. Simply add, the following code in your editor;img src=u201dlow-budget-hotels-in-goa.jpgu201d alt=u201dlow budget hotels in Goau201d/Here, alt=u201dlow budget hotels in Goau201d represents your ALT text in HTML version. If you donu2019t know how to code, then the first method is a better option for you.One more thing, unless your image and its data are not relevant to your article (text around the image), it does not make any sense adding tons of beautiful images only to increase the length of your blog post.The bottom line,By perfectly optimizing your images for search engines as well as human visitors with the appropriate alternative text you can get better SEO score than your competitors.5. Image Format u2024 JPEG, PNG or GIF?You know there are different image formats available including JPEG (JPG), PNG and GIF, BMP, TIFF, and RAW, etc. But, JPEG, PNG, and GIF are widely used by many bloggers.JPEG Format: JPEG is the most commonly used image format due to the highest possible quality with minimum file size compared to other formats. But, it does not support transparency and has lossy compression.Still, I prefer using JPEG images as they offer smaller file size for same quality compared to the other equivalent image formats.PNG Format: PNG is a good alternative for JPEG images which offers amazing lossless compression. Even if you edit your image several times or process for resize compression, it wonu2019t degrade in quality.It also supports transparency which is useful in some cases like the logo. Though itu2019s an excellent format, the file size is quite high compared to JPEG format for the same quality. For capturing screenshots, PNG is better image format gives decent quality.GIF Format: GIF is another popular format that supports animation and also the transparency. But, the quality of GIF is not up to other formats like JPG and PNG, etc.Among all the image formats, JPEG seems the best choice for the blog images because it offers good quality images with minimum file size. The smaller image size reduces overall web page weight because it helps in loading site quickly that is one of the ranking factors in SEO.6. Adding Image Sitemap To The Webmaster Tools/Search ConsoleIf you are in the field of SEO, then you might know what sitemap is. But, for other people, the sitemap is an index or list of pages on your site where all contents that you want to rank in SERP are designed in a hierarchical manner. It helps both human visitors and especially search engine bots to navigate your website quickly.By adding a sitemap to the search engines (by using webmaster tools/search console), you can request search engine spiders to crawl your pages and images to index in the search results.Through image sitemap, search engines receive the metadata regarding the images on your site. It helps search engine to discover the images which may not find through regular crawling. Adding relevant details like title, geographic location, image type, and license, etc. in standard sitemap you can increase your chances to rank higher in image search.If you run a website/blog where nothing to do with images, then you can keep this task aside. But, for other niches like photography, tourism, technology, feature gadgets and website where you add product images, creating an image sitemap and adding to the webmasteru2019s tools account is something that you should do with priority. So, your images can get indexed and appear in search results on prominent position giving you massive reach and occasionally huge traffic incoming.Donu2019t you think so?How To Create Image Sitemap?Donu2019t worry! Creating image sitemap is not very difficult. You can use the WordPress plugins like Udinra All Image Sitemap and Complete Image Sitemap, etc. or other online resources. Some of them are free while other may cost you few bucks but for the sites containing a ton of images, it worth paying for such useful tools.Once you have created the image sitemap and submitted to the search engines, all images will be crawled by spiders and indexed in SERP.7. Something To RememberUsing Image Captions And DescriptionThe image caption is visible to the human visitors on your web page. It let them know what you want to say through that particular image.You can give credit to image author if you are using it from an external source. Still, image caption should convey your message clearly whether itu2019s a name for the image, credit link or information about the event in that particular image.The description is something you want to add extra to the image more than the title and ALT text. You can add around 2-3 lines of text describing your image. But, make sure you are doing it properly following the SEO guidelines.Though itu2019s not compulsory, adding the caption or description may help you in improving user experience and SEO value.Image LinkWhen you make the image clickable, it helps people to view the enlarged version. You can also link another article or external source through a custom hyperlink to your blog images just like banner ads.But, sometimes you may face trouble if someone is hotlinking your image. It eats up your resources for no reason. If you find such things happening to your images, approach to the blog owner who is hotlinking your image and tell him either remove it or give you proper credit.If you are using CDN (Content Delivery Network), then it may not issue for you. But, think about a different angle, if someone is linking to your image, he is actually giving backlink to your site which is a major factor in Off-Page SEO. By serving your images (static contents) over CDN, you wonu2019t get benefit from those backlinks.Now, you have to decide whether let others link to your images or not.Making Images ShareableIf you think the images you create are worth sharing, then make them shareable. You can use WordPress plugins like SumoMe for this purpose. In case, you get maximum image shares, then most probably it helps to improve the social signal for your site improving your SEO score.Using WordPress Plugins For Image Optimization PurposeYou can find many plugins for the image optimization. SEO Friendly Images, WP Smush, EWWW Image Optimizer and TinyPNG, etc. are a few of them. These plugins are useful in resizing, compressing and similar activities needed for the image optimization with the few clicks.Test The Number Of Images Per PageYou already know, more images on page increase overall page size affecting the site loading time. So, keeping an appropriate number of images per page is a better option.If you are using an e-commerce site, then it becomes critical where images are a crucial factor in the user engagement and conversion. Still, you can test how many the products are necessary to get maximum sales.Test User ExperienceWith analytics, you can easily find CTR and visitor engagement of your site. If you have cluttered the website with irrelevant graphics, then the most probably people leave your site immediately which increases bounce rate. So optimizing images for website users is a vital part of SEO.Apart from that, test the angles, lights and color schemes people like the most to prbetter user experience.Create InfographicsThe blog posts with infographics get more social shares compared to those without.Infographics let audience easily digest the maximum information within minimum time by using a graphical aid. Itu2019s trending in blogging industry so that you should focus on optimizing infographics in a proper way.Pinterest is a great source of the web traffic if you share your images especially infographics there with linking back to your blog articles.Leverage Social MediaIsnu2019t it odd here? What is the relation between image optimization and social media?You might think like that. Am I right?Yes, here is something special for you. You definitely know these couple of things; the right images improve engagement and the second one, social media can drive a lot of referral traffic.Why not leverage both things?Export your image theme across multiple image dimensions depending on the social media channel you want to leverage and share them with giving a link back to your site.Find which social media channels are the best for your niche and use them for promotion. Itu2019s the method where thousand words article wonu2019t help as much as a single image.Do you get, why the image is powerful than thousand words?Wrapping UpI know how much time you spend on writing a perfect optimized post. So, donu2019t let your efforts go waste only for an insane mistake.By following the simple practices mentioned here, you can optimize your images for both human visitors as well as search engines. Iu2019m pretty sure that with these simple tips you will start seeing the positive results soon.If you have liked this article, donu2019t forget to share it with your friends. If you have any query or suggestion, let me know by using the comment section below.Also, mention which strategies you use for image optimization to rank in search results.You can read more articles on www.websitetipstricks.com
