6 Tips for SEO Image Optimization
Editor's Note: Today we have a post from guest author Paul Teitelman. Paul is an SEO and link building expert from Toronto. Paul will be discussing one of the "lost arts" of SEO - image optimization. Images are often overlooked or forgotten when important SEO tasks are being executed, but image optimization remains as important as ever and can often be the difference in today's highly competitive search results. Read on to learn Paul's tips for effective image optimization.
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Image Optimization - The Ultimate Search Engine Optimization Solution
We all are aware of the importance and value of a successful digital marketing campaign, and many marketers will agree that SEO plays an important role. In addition to link building, there are penalties for things you can do to make your campaign a success; Without tearing your budget open.
One of the most important steps to take under the umbrella of SEO is image optimization. An integrated SEO campaign includes a strategic plan to create images that resonate with your audience while remaining relevant to your content. Google itself recognizes the importance of images and shares some helpful image optimization tips in its image publishing guides.
To make sure that you optimize your images properly, here are six basic tips to get you started
Things to Keep In Mind
Use unique images that are page-relevant
Users are more likely to respond to the image before reading your post.
It is human nature to focus our attention on images. An attractive image that re-connects your theme can inspire users to share your content and will surely leave an impression.
Take the time to describe the topic of your article with humor, drama or romance, to attract an audience at an emotional level, and you will attract them not only to the brilliant commercial of your new product. Even better? If you can create your own original image, it’s even better for SEO purposes.
This one is really true if your subject matter tells about a product or service that you are offering – The royalty free images have been seen by people many times and don’t use these same images. Invest the time to capture a photo yourself, that is related to your company, and use that instead.
“If you use an image just to use an image and get a green bullet in our SEO plugin, you are doing it wrong. The image should reflect the topic of the post, or have illustrative purposes within the article, of course” – Yoast
For more tips on using the best photos and photos that are possible for your marketing, see this Shopify article.
Use the Highest Quality Format Possible
Search engines prefer high-resolution images and quality content.
Web pages with images that are low resolution or incorrectly formatted may appear distorted on your tablet or mobile phone. Do not sell your content using low quality images.
Here are some tips to remember when choosing file formats:
- For most ecommerce situations JPEGs will be best. They give the best quality and the smallest file size.
- Never use GIFs for large product images. The file size will be very huge and there is no suitable way to reduce it. GIFs can be used for thumbnails and decorative images.
- PNGs can be used as a good alternative to both JPEGs and GIFS. If you are only able to get product photos in PNG format, try using PNG-8 over PNG-24. PNGs excel at simple decorative images because of their extremely small file size.
Break it Down
What Are The Different Types Of SEO?
At Syndiket, we believe four types of SEO exist – and we have an acronym to represent those 4 types of SEO. The acronym is T.R.A.P.
“T” stands for Technical, “R” stands for Relevancy, “A” stands for Authority, and “P” stands for popularity. Search engine optimization has many smaller divisions within the 4 types, but all of them can be placed into one of these 4 buckets.
Generally, technical SEO for local businesses carry the least importance for ranking. Technical SEO has a bare minimum that is required and this usually includes things like site speed, indexation issues, crawlability, and schema. Once the core technical parts are done, minimal upkeep is required.
Relevancy is one of trivium elements of SEO. It has equal importance with popularity signals and authority signals. Relevancy signals are based on algorithmic learning principles. Bots crawl the internet every time a searcher has a search. Each search is given a relevancy score and the URLs that pop up for a query. The higher the relevancy score you attain, the greater your aggregated rating becomes in Google’s eyes. Digital marketing is a strange thing in 2020, and ranking a website requires the website to be relevant on many fronts.
Google’s Co-creator, Larry Page, had a unique idea in 1998 which has led to the modern-day Google Empire. “Page Rank”, named after Larry Page himself, was the algorithm that established Google as a search engine giant. The algorithm ranked websites by authority.
Every page of a website has authority and the sum of all pages has another authority metric. The authority metric is largely determined by how many people link to them (backlinks). The aggregate score of all pages pointing to a domain creates the domain score, which is what Syndiket calls “Domain Rating”, per Ahrefs metrics. The more a site is referenced, the more authority it has. But, the real improvement to the algorithm came when Google began to classify authority weight.
If Tony Hawk endorsed Syndiket for skateboarding, it would carry a lot more authority than 5 random high school kids endorsing Syndiket. This differentiation in authority happened in 2012 with the Penguin update. Authority SEO is complicated but VERY important.
Popularity signals are especially strong for GMB or local SEO, but popularity and engagement are used for all rankings. The goal of this signal is for Google to verify its own algorithm. You can check off all the boxes, but if your content is something real people hate, Google has ways to measure that. Syndiket has proprietary methods of controlling CTR (click-through rate) but we also infuse CRO methods into our work to make sure people actually like the content. Social shares and likes are also included in this bucket.
Reduce the Size of Your Image File
Google is very popular in the field of mobile devices in terms of creating an index for mobile devices.
This explains that you need to account for mobile with your images. By scaling down large image files, you can increase page speed, which is important for mobile viewing.
Pages that take longer time to open often experience higher bounce rates due to the rapid departure of active visitors looking for an immediate solution. Use a smaller image of your product with a higher resolution and offer visitors the opportunity to view a larger image.
There are many great tools for optimizing images, including:
It doesn’t matter which tool you use, it is crucial to optimize your images, as this will be useful both for the user experience and for technical SEO on your site.
Organize multiple images for optimum viewing
How you organize your images is as important as what you can choose.
Arrange your images in a way that makes sense in the context of the user’s journey. For example, if you show an apartment for rent using a series of pictures, then index them in a logical order from which a potential client will travel around the house.
In addition, you must make sure that there are no gaps in your imagination. For example, providing visitors with interesting angles for your car for sale, but neglecting important details such as interiors, engines, lighting, etc., diverts traffic from your site. Images can interact like text cannot, and you want your visitors to retain the whole picture.
In addition, you must make sure that there are no gaps in your imagination. For example, providing visitors with interesting angles for your car for sale, but neglecting important details such as interiors, engines, lighting, etc., diverts traffic from your site. Images can interact like text cannot, and you want your visitors to keep the whole picture.
However, a word of caution: it is important to always check the number of images that you use on a page. This can be a prudent act, as reducing the number of images will improve the opening time and can lead to an increase in the number of clicks on links. But at the same time, providing more images (such as different angles of the product) can improve the user experience and lead to more traffic.
To find the right balance for your audience, you should always test several options.
Include a Concise Caption with Your Image
URLs such as Captions can be crawled by search engines.
Anyone who uses keywords related to your caption will include your page in the search results. The key is to maintain both page relevance and image relevance.
Images with wrong captions will increase the bounce rates quite fast, which will serve as a bad signal to the Google search engine that your content is inappropriate.
Captions also help make your content more engaging and easy for readers to understand. According to KissMetrics, captions under images are read, on average, 300% more than the body copy itself.
Leaving captions blank is a missed opportunity in terms of SEO and user experience.
Utilize the “Alt Text” to Maximize Accessibility
The often overlooked optional text box makes it impossible for users to access the details of the contents of your image.
Offering your image in text facilitates use by interpreters for the blind, health care attendants, and others giving valuable service roles to the physically challenged. Moreover, accurately filling out your alt text gives another way to help users digest and understand your content.
These descriptions serve to increase the relevance of your content and can improve your profile with search engines, helping web crawlers better understand your images.
Like captions, alternate text makes it possible to enhance your content regarding user experience and search engine optimization.
Conclusion
Reaching to the top of search results can be hard work, but it’s worth it when you start seeing returns in the context of organic traffic.
To succeed, you need to do everything to increase the ranking of your site, and image optimization can be an additional spark that your site needs to stand out from competitors. At the very least, you should follow these basic steps to make sure your images are optimized for user convenience and search.
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