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Optimizing website images is critical for businesses in highly visual industries. But optimizing images for SEO can help with overall site performance for the rest of us, too. And who doesn’t want a boost in the search engines AND in web site usability?
If you’re an SEO specialist, you know all about the challenges of working with image-laden websites—you’ve seen the photographers and designers with Flash-only sites, artists and art galleries with almost no text on their pages, and so on.
Well, West Palm Beach photographer Amber Bishop has taken it upon herself to convert her Flash portfolio into an optimized image gallery, rebuilding her site in WordPress. (It’s still underway behind the scenes right now, but I recommend checking back later. She’s also working on a killer social media presence. Pretty impressive considering she’s doing it all herself.)
Talking with Amber about the challenges of image optimization inspired me to pull this post together, hoping it would be helpful to others—not just photographers—looking to get an edge online.
A few of the benefits of optimizing images for SEO:
Your images can show in image search as well as universal search. This can be just as great for product images and infographics as it is for an image-based portfolio (i.e., retailers’ products, restaurants showcasing culinary creations, hotels can show off rooms and views, camps can promote their activities, etc.)
Your website content can expand in the eyes of the search engines, as they’ll be able to “see” the pictures after optimization.
Users can expect a better experience on your site. (Faster loading times, support for different browsers, help for those using screen readers, etc.)
And, without further ado, here are the primary elements you need to tackle when you optimize your images for the search engines:
Optimizing the image itself
There seems to no consensus as to whether or not the actual file name helps with SEO. But all things equal, it may help, so rename it if it’s not meaningful to begin with. (If nothing else, it’ll help you recognize your files better.) Some advocate using the word “image” in the file name, since it’s more descriptive, and those who are searching for an image are likely to use that word in their search string. Hyphens instead of underscores are recommended between words (e.g. lakefront-view-image.jpg)
Be sure to use common image file types such as JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP. Some SEO experts suggest jpg is preferred. However Shari Thurow of Grantastic Designs recommends using JPEG file type for photos and GIF for all other graphic images due to how search engines interpret the different file types. Google suggests that you should place your images in one folder on your site, mydomain.com/images, for example.
Reduce the file size to help ensure your website pages load quickly. This helps with site performance and may also contribute to a well-optimized page for SEO, too. (Some SEO are noticing the search engines take page load time into consideration.) A couple services that let you do this are Yahoo’s Smush It and punypng.com.
SEO Smarty brings up image freshness, too. (In fact, SEW suggests re-uploading your images to keep them fresh).
Optimize the tags and content around the image
Title tag. The title tag is essentially the title for the image. It can also show as a tool tip when someone mouses over the image. Use keywords in a natural manner to give the image a title. (As with all other elements listed here, do not stuff with keywords!)
Alt attribute. The alt attribute is an alternative text description, which explains what the image is. Assistive technologies will read the alt attribute aloud to help vision impaired site users “see” the page. If a site user has images turned off, this text will appear in place of the image, and it also appears before the image loads if it’s taking some time. e-Consultancy postulates that Google seems to prefer descriptive text in sentence form for the alt attribute. I expect a user might prefer that, too.
If an image links to another page, be sure to use alt text that’s meaningful to the content of the page linked. (But this shouldn’t be a problem, as hopefully the image itself is relevant to the page linked, right? And, by the way, linking from images when possible is a great idea, since users naturally tend to click on them.)
Here’s a nifty image SEO checker tool that can help you take a look at how well the images on your site fit with Google’s recommendations for image optimization.
Captions. When I wrote about how to make your website more powerful by making it personal, I suggested using captions under your photos. In addition to helping support your message and drawing the reader’s eye, captions can also help with SEO. It seems that the search engines look at captions and other text surrounding a photo or image to help determine the subject.
Be sure to use a descriptive caption that will help the reader make sense of the image quickly. Keep in mind that captions may also show with the image in search results, helping draw the click.
Surrounding text. Place the image near the most relevant text on the page. The text surrounding the image may play a role in helping the search engines figure out what an image is about, so be sure your carefully optimized image is actually placed next to the paragraph it most closely relates to. (You’d be surprised how many times the images copywriters suggest to support specific points on a page wind up next to an irrelevant part of the page after the designer is through.)
Number of images on the page. The same as with written topics, you don’t want to dilute your page with a lot of different, unrelated images.
Some SEOs even suggest giving each picture its own page.
Promote your images. Use Flikr and other social media platforms to get additional exposure for your photos and graphics. Be sure to take advantage of all the extra content and labeling options available. Many let you input location, tag people, and so on.
