Images play a significant role to make your content more appealing. They help visitors better understand your content if used rightly.
An old saying is “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Undoubtedly it doesn’t apply to Google but it is absolutely right when you need to enliven your content or simply saying, make your content more interesting. Images are needed when you want to spice up your content consisting of 1,000 dull words.
People, nowadays, like more visual content instead of simple text. The content consists of images that attract more people’s attention.
We recommend simply that use images in your content correctly if you want to make it enchanting and engaging. This way you will surely get an increase in your website’s organic traffic and search engine optimization.
Understanding the basics of image optimization is needed to provide your brand with better chances to succeed with SEO.
What is Image Optimization?
Do you know what is images optimization? If not, let me explain in short.
Image optimization is the process to make your image faultless on smartphones and desktops.
In simple words, optimizing images means reducing your images file size as much as possible, but without losing image quality. the purpose of image optimization is to craft high-quality images with the lowermost file size. Three basic elements are here to pay attention to:
- Image file size
- Image height and width
- Compression level
In short, the process of generating and delivering high-quality images in a perfect format, resolution, and size to boost user engagement is called Image Optimization. this process includes correctly labeling images so search engine crawlers can read can easily read and identify page context.
Here are a few incredible tips for you to optimize your Images:
Table Of Content
- Resize Your Images
- Choose the Accurate Format
- Select the Accurate Compression Rate
- Optimize the File Name for Images
- Avoid Use Stock Photos
- Write Image Captions
- Add Images to Your Site Map
- Resize Your Images
File size and image size are two different things. Image size stats an image’s dimensions (like 1024 by 680 pixels) while the file size is the space required to store it on the server (for example 350 kilobytes).
If you create an image with high resolution and higher dimensions (mostly made with professional cameras) slower your page loading speed. So, to work well on the web, you need to scale down the file size without sacrificing its quality.
- Choose the Accurate Format
Choose the right format to optimize your SEO images. Many formats are there to choose from but the popular formats are:
- PGN: best for simple images
- JPEG: best for images with too many colors
- WebP: the only format that is supported by Firefox and Chrome
- Select the Accurate Compression Rate
If an image is compressed too much, the file size gets smaller but the quality is bad. On the other hand, if you use the compression rate lower, the quality of the image is good the file size is big.
So, you should try different file types and compression rates for every image. A bundle of image-editing tools is available, like Adobe Photoshop, that has an option of “save for web”. Such tools automatically reduce the file size while you optimize image quality.
- Optimize the File Name for Images
It is very important to choose the accurate file name for your SEO images. Name the file that includes descriptive, relevant, and authentic keywords to earn the most SEO power.
Use target keywords at starting and dispatch them using hyphens. Just remember, don’t use underscores as search engines don’t identify them so can’t see the words individually.
- Avoid Use Stock Images
Stock photos are easy and cheap. Just avoid being tempted by cheap and convenient.
Visual content is considered a keystone of nearly each branding campaign. Still, we often see such popular brands using stock images. This act demoralizes the credibility of their visual-branding standard that they earned very hardly.
So, create unique images and avoid stock photos to increase the credibility of your branding standard and make your business that prides itself on customer services.
- Write Image Captions
What is an image caption? The image caption is the words directly below the image. Image caption may not affect SEO but, as compared to file name and alt text, it is visible on the web page. That’s why they can enhance the user experience.
So, use image caption to create a good user experience and lower the bounce rate.
Because most users check the caption to get a feel for the complete content. So, not adding an image caption can increase your site’s bounce rate that leads to damage your credibility with different search engines.
- Add Images to Your Site Map
Adding images to your site map results in more organic traffic. So, if you want to enhance the chances of search engines crawling and indexing, add unique images to your site maps.
Final Words
Climbing up at the top of search results is definitely a tough task. But if you make effective SEO strategies and take steps attentively and wisely, it will not be hard to meet your level.
Image optimization is one of the significant aspects that helps a lot to get a higher ranking in SERPs. So, follow the above-mentioned tips and tactics to optimize your image SEO and hence boost user experience your credibility with search engines.