Introduction: What is Image SEO?
Image SEO is an important part of ranking on search engines. It is impossible to rank without good images, but just having high-quality images isn’t enough.
An image SEO strategy aims to improve a website’s ranking and visitor experience via improved indexability, and quality images on the site. As with text-based content, search engines evaluate the images on your website. The more SEO-friendly your images are, the better your search engine results in terms of web and image searches.
In the same way that your content should be related to your site’s concept, the images on your site should also be related. If your website’s visual nature doesn’t meet SEO’s requirements, you will lose SEO ranking as if you were falling from a cliff. One should know that search engines like images attached to content so that the SEOs can make sense of them.
This means if you describe a computer with a picture of Chicken, your website’s SEO considerations will be inevitably negative, which ends up getting deeper and deeper.
It is difficult, however, to optimize an image for search engines with an elbow full of paint. Here are some strategies and tips.
The Importance of Image SEO in Your Digital Marketing Strategy
Images can be an effective way of conveying a message to your audience. With the power of digital marketing, you can spread your message effectively without even saying a word.
But there are numerous factors that determine the successfulness of an image in particular search engine result page (SERP). One of these factors is SEO. If you want your images to rank well in SERP, they need to have good quality and relevant content. You can use text overlays or textboxes to provide more information about the product or service being displayed in the image and what it does for your business.
A business’s visual appeal has the capability of attracting the attention of people in a flash, making it such an important aspect. Humans are more likely to remember images than text-based information as images tend to be stored for longer periods of time in the brain. Additionally, images are easier to digest and absorb compared to other sources.
By including images in your content, you make your users more likely to engage with it. Consequently, images should be displayed in the highest quality for every content. SEO is vital here since SEO-friendly images improve your website’s visibility in a number of ways.
More Engagement and Interaction on Your Website
Sites with images that are SEO-friendly are among the most popular with internet users. Your bounce rate will be greatly impacted by having SEO-optimized visuals.
Augment your space in Image Search Results on Google
Google Image Search and other image search tools are now being used every day by almost everyone. Therefore, your ranking in search engines for your images will increase over time as you use images that are SEO-friendly.
Reduced page load time
A website’s loading speed will be affected by optimized and readjusted images.
Images connected to your website, the better optimized and optimized for SEO, the faster the loading speed. SEO considers the loading speed of a website to be a critical factor.
Multiple forms of communication on a single platform feels more serious
Multiple forms of communication on a single webpage feel more serious to the viewer. Imagine the books from school days, An image or an illustration made us understand the subject matter better and felt more serious than just pages with just text. Probably one of the many reasons why Mathematics (except geometry) did not engage all your peers during schooldays.
How to do Image SEO?
Include Images on your website
Your website must first contain images in order to achieve image SEO. The search engines notice the addition of graphics and visuals to your pages. In addition, search engine rankings are arranged according to location. You will be able to get your content to the top of the first page when someone searches for it.
Moreover, images are appealing and impulsive for anyone regardless of their demographics. Sites with these characteristics are considered to be of high quality. The reason for this is that images are easily consumed and understood. Moreover, when they are attached to any corner of a text or content, they can be used to empower any message being given or sold. With images, your customers can better understand and retain what you are offering them.
Image format (PNG, JPG, WEBP, etc,)
There are different types of images, and each format has its own unique characteristics. PNGs and JPEGs are the most common and well-known image formats.
The PNG format offers a high-quality image that can be transparent as well. Moreover, it also requires a bit more space to fit, so loading it is also a bit more challenging. PNGs are the best to use. They are always able to be rendered with higher resolution, which allows you to resize it without losing quality.
On the other hand, JPGs have lower image quality, but they are smaller in size.
GIFs are another type of format. GIF files can now be detected by Google Image Search along with regular images. When they are displayed correctly, they will increase your SEO ranking and increase your engagement rate.
WEBP files are essentially JPEG files that have been compressed with the WebP format. They are smaller in size than the original high-quality photo image. WebP compression rate is 25% to 100% better than JPEG, which means that this file format will save you half to one-third of your file size!
Image Compression
Reduce the size of your images to increase their SEO value by compressing them. A web page’s visual content makes up almost 25% of the overall size. Upload speed may be affected by such high storage. It means you will rank lower in search engines. Furthermore, it does not need to be expensive or take a lot of time. You can use Photoshop and free internet tools like JPEG Optimizer and Kraken to compress your images.
Image in context to the Content
In addition to attracting user attention, the images you add must be relevant to your content to be effective in SEO.
Among the most important factors affecting the value of SEO is this. In general, the more relevant your image is to your topic/content, the higher your website’s SEO value. Therefore, the images you use should reflect the content of the title and be as relevant as possible.
Naming the Image File
For SEO ranking, Google can detect images, but it can’t understand what’s in the image like we can. In order to help search engines understand why you are sharing an image, you should provide relevant metadata. Your web page is actually helping yourself, not anyone else. By not misleading search engines, you will achieve higher SEO rankings.
Keyword naming your Images
Images with keywords in their titles are more SEO-friendly. Defining the image with keywords will help the search engines understand what you are sharing.
Browser Caching
Another method of improving your SEO ranking is caching visual content like logos and graphics on pages using browser caching. While it may seem like a small and ineffective method, it is actually very effective as it will directly affect the loading speed.
Structured Data
Schema markup is also known as structured data. Search engines see your image as more intensely informational thanks to structured data techniques that add backend details. Furthermore, SERPs will perceive your images as “rich images.” Your image must also have two properties: being crawlable and indexable.
Site Map Inclusion
Your website will be more noticeable to search engines thanks to the images containing XML sitemaps. As a result, you tell Google that you have images and Google is able to index and crawl your images.
Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)
Images can also be optimized by CDNs. Through optimization and device detection, you can provide your website visitors with images in the quickest way possible. A CDN for images will reduce your image payload and deliver your images to your devices in the most suitable way.
Conclusion: Image SEO is essential for business
Its principal effectiveness rests in the benefits it brings, however, and not just in the advantages it brings. Internet traffic, each of whose roots are linked to your website, increases your revenue annually. Resize images and associate them with appropriate content without losing their quality.
Every company that wants to be ranked higher in SEO rankings while offering quality will benefit from image search engine optimization. We at 7 Peaks Digital Marketing (7PDM) develop websites from the ground up keeping the importance of Image SEO in mind. In case you wish to develop an optimized website please get in touch with us.
