Optimizing your images to acquire better SEO results is an integral part of any online marketing strategy. Having them can help your website or blog rank higher in search engine results, resulting in increased traffic and more potential customers.
By following a few simple tips, you can make your images more search engine friendly and improve your chances of ranking higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Create Your Custom Images
No longer can a website be loaded with stock photos without raising questions about plagiarism or lack of creativity. Though they’re cost-free, the widespread redundancy in their utilization is a major drawback. Even if you do everything right to optimize such photos for search engines, they still won’t help your rankings.
All of the pictures you use must be unique and directly related to the content you’re writing about. For an improved user experience and more engagement, you can create creative images with the help of the many free graphic design templates available online.
In addition, since original photos rank on relevant queries, they increase the likelihood that your material will appear in Google’s Featured Snippets as Image Packs.
Keep the Format in Mind
It has already been shown that desktop and mobile page load times significantly impact search engine rankings. Therefore, some picture formats can drastically affect your page speed due to the necessity for alternative compression techniques.
In summary, you should consider using the right formats for your photographs, ones that provide the best compression methods while preserving a high level of image quality. It’ll be a boon to the page’s load time.
In terms of file types, JPEG and PNG are by far the most common: The former is suitable for thumbnails, huge photographs, and illustrations; the latter is suitable for graphics, screenshots, and images that need a transparent background.
Properly Name Your Image Files
How does the naming of an image impact its search engine optimization? Google’s Image SEO guidance emphasizes the need of giving your image a meaningful file name that helps search engines determine its content.
In order to increase your site’s SEO value, it is important that the names of your picture files contain relevant keywords while also being descriptive. Instead of using filenames like IM03874.jpg, use “city-lights-in-paris.”
Google suggests replacing underscores in image filenames with hyphens. To translate or localize your website, you should also consider updating the file names appropriately.
Resize and Compress
Before you upload an image, be sure the file isn’t too big. If the image is larger than the allowed width on your website, you may need to adjust it. A slow page load is bad for both user experience and search engine rankings. Photoshop and VistaCreate are useful programs for this purpose.
Here’s a helpful hint for WordPress users: Obtain an image scaling plugin, turn it on, select the desired size, and you’re done.
An image may need to be compressed in addition to being resized, which means the file size must be reduced while maintaining the original image quality. It aids in image optimization, which in turn reduces page load times.
In order to reduce the size of an image, you can use programs like ImageOptim, Optimizilla, or TinyPNG. The Smush plugin is also useful for WordPress users.
Conclusion
Overall, there are a few key things to keep in mind when optimizing your images for better SEO results. First, make sure to use relevant keywords in your file names and tags. Second, choose the right file format for your images. And third, use a tool like TinyPNG to compress your images without losing quality.
By following these tips, you can help your images rank higher in search engines and attract more traffic to your website.
If you are looking for a well-trusted SEO agency in Rochester, look no further than our expertise here at Makarios Marketing. We help businesses grow with customized SEO and marketing strategies, and we offer services from website development to complete online marketing with lead generation. Call us today, and let us help optimize all the images on your webpage.