Did you know that image optimization is a huge part of search engine optimization? Search engines actually go through not only the text on your articles or webpage, but they also search for keywords within your image file names. In the past, a lot of bloggers and internet presences just viewed images as eye candy for their posts. But in truth, images can give you the traffic boost that you’ve been looking for, if you spend a few extra minutes on your photo posting routine. Let’s discuss some ways that you can improve your website’s SEO with image optimization.
Image Names
So, you’ve taken tons of photos for your most recent products, and you upload them on your site with the default name that your camera has given them. Wrong. Let’s try this again. Think about how your readers or customers search for products or articles. How would they type in what they are looking for? Consider looking into your website’s analytics, and figure out what phrasing patterns your customers use to perform searches. Apply the formula you find to your picture naming process. If you don’t want to get as detailed as looking into your site’s analytics, make sure you utilize relevant keywords when naming your images, being descriptive as possible. Use your feature keyword in the image title, and place it towards the beginning of the title.
Alternative Tags
After naming your photos appropriately, you’ll want to look into your alternative tags. What’s an alternative tag? It’s what search engines turn to when a browser can’t properly render an image. It essentially associates keywords with images. It has been said that using alt tags is one of the best ways for e-commerce products to show up in Google image and web search. Check out these simple rules to follow when it comes to utilizing alt tags.
Keyword Descriptions
Next up, descriptions. This is just another way that your images can truly propel the SEO on your posts. The description is the little box of data that pops up when people hover over your image. It should contain some or most of your keywords. Do not simply fill up the description box with obnoxious, repeating versions of your keywords. This is not hidden text, so be respectful of your audience. However, do remember to take this opportunity to advance your keyword cause. This is also the caption that will appear if your image shows up on a Pinterest feed.
Strong Captions
Last, but certainly not least, let’s put a caption under the image. Some people think that captions are unnecessary and are clutter in the middle of a post, but a caption is a truly great way to get the eye of a scanning reader to stop breezing through your post. This is huge, as a high bounce rate can affect your SEO scores. The goal is to keep readers engaged on your content for as long as possible.
Now that we have discussed the steps to improving your website’s SEO with image optimization, let’s go through an example. We’ve written a post on the 5 best e-commerce software platforms for small businesses, and have decided on a feature image. Here’s how we will optimize it for the best search engine optimization on the post:
- Image name: best-e-commerce-software-
platforms-small-business.jpg - Alt text: the top 5 e-commerce software platforms for small businesses
- Description: every small business needs to utilize one of the top 5 software platforms
- Caption: utilizing a top software platform for e-commerce will benefit your small business immensely
See how we’ve used feature keywords, e-commerce, software platforms, and small business, in each of the above sections? You will be surprised by how little time it takes to improve your website’s SEO with image optimization. Don’t be shocked when you find your page traffic skyrocketing…that’s the magic of image optimization.
