There are several factors that make up a well-optimized site in the eyes of Google. One of those factors is image optimization. Unfortunately, it’s a step that even the savviest small business marketers often overlook. It’s no secret that images boost your marketing effectiveness yet poorly optimized images can actually detract from your efforts. Here are a few image optimization tips for better SEO.
According to Search Engine Watch, optimizing your site’s images will help with your site’s UX, load time, and improve your site’s rankings in the regular SERPs as well as image search. Image SEO is especially important if your site has a significant number of images, and if not properly optimized you will be missing out on lots of potential traffic and rankings. Its importance will only grow as visual search becomes more prevalent. Google and Bing both use for visual search, so now is the time to focus on making sure your images are properly optimized. Below are a few areas to focus on when optimizing images.
This is in addition to naming your file image, alt text is what shows if an image doesn’t appear correctly. It’s also helpful for the visually impair and for search engines, where you once again are helping images be identified. Alt text is typically added once an image is uploaded onto the site in your library. Alt text also known as alt attributes, alt descriptions, or alt tags, are used to describe the appearance and function of an image on a page.
Many novice marketers find the best image and upload it to the site, never paying attention to the file size. Unfortunately, over time, that can really slow down a website! Your image file size plays an important role in how your site will. Having large file size images on your site can cause your site to load slowly; with page speed becoming a ranking factor, it’s even more important than before to make sure your site loads quickly, so file size is important! It’s why many savvy web dev people use JPEGs as much as possible on sites. Loading times of your site are important for both user experience and SEO, so make sure that you reduce your site’s image file sizes to ensure that you have a fast-loading site.
There are several tools that can help spot images in need of optimization. Screaming Frog is a great (and free) tool that can help you find which images need alt text. For WordPress, programs such as Smush will point out which images need to be resized. If you want to make sure you’re using nothing but JPEGs on your site, a simple review of your library will quickly show you which images may need to be addressed.
These are just four simple ways small business marketing professionals can ensure your images are optimized. Following these steps alone will go a long way to better image SEO.
Running a small business is not easy. New startups especially struggle when it comes to…
If you’re a small business owner, you want your website to be creative and interesting…
One of the easiest yet most overlooked sources of new business for small businesses is…
Marketers have a lot of different tactics to choose from when promoting a small business.…
Creating a marketing budget for your small business is essential for achieving your marketing goals.…
Link building is an important aspect of search engine optimization (SEO) and plays a significant…