Or, how image optimisation can help you rank on Google

Images are a great way to spruik up an article, add context, and make your content more skimmable – all good things to increase engagement and help your bounce rate. But without proper image optimisation, you could be hurting your SEO. Let me explain. 

According to Yoast, Google is becoming more aware of the data in and around images, and how it fits into the larger context of a page and website. Furthermore, large image files may look great, but they slow down your webpage, negatively impacting the user experience, and your SEO.

With Google’s shift to focus more on visual journeys as a ranking factor, image optimisation is more important now than ever as part of any SEO strategy.

So what can you do to make the most of images in your quest to climb the rankings ladder?

Here are seven ways to boost your SEO with image optimisation:

1. Pick a relevant image
2. Resize your image
3. Name your image
4. Alt tag
5. Image description
6. Image captions
7. Eat some corn chips…

1. Pick a relevant image

You can take your own picture, hire someone to do it for you, or find one online. Regardless of where you source your images, it’s important to make them relevant to your page content. SEO on an irrelevant image is keyword stuffing (see SEO basics for small business), and can actually hurt your search engine ranking. So pick a pic that fits.

Here’s some useful sources of royalty free images for your content:

Paid stock image sites:

• Shutterstock
• Getty Images
• Adobe Stock

Free stock image sites:

• Pixabay
• Stocksnap
• Pexels

Or…

You can Google Image search. Just be sure to filter out the copyrighted images by clicking on Tools, then Usage rights, and select Labeled for reuse. You never know what gems you’ll find.

Furthermore, the placement of your image on the page is far more important than you may think. Google will scan your page title and content surrounding your image to assess its relevance to the page. So make sure your image is relevant.

2. Resize your image

Google reports that 53% of mobile visitors will leave your page if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds. What’s more, Amazon calculated that a page load decrease of just one second could cost them $1.6 billion in sales each year. 

Now, you may not be risking billions of dollars, but I’m sure you don’t want to be turning customers away either. Reducing the size of your image files can help your page load faster, reducing your bounce rate, potentially increasing your bottom line. That sounds pretty good to me. And it’s really easy to do.

Here are some simple ways to reduce your file size of your images:

Image editing software

Software, such as Photoshop, gives you a lot of control over the image compression process to give you file size you want. But this process needs to be done before you upload, and can become quiet time-consuming, especially if you need to do it for every image on your site.

Image compression plugins

There are a lot of really great plugins for WordPress that automatically reduce the file size of your images for you. Sound good? It sure does. Here are a few to look at:

• reSmush.it (what I use)
• EWWW Image Optimizer
• Compress JPEG & PNG images

It’s also worth noting that your image dimensions should match the size you wish to display on your page. For example, an 800×800 px image viewed at 300×300 px on a webpage should be resized to help decrease load time.

3. Name your image

The keywords in your image title tells Google what your image is without looking at it. It also helps people find your images in search queries.

“Image975.jpg” won’t cut it, as it is not relevant to the image or page content. Keep your image file names brief and descriptive; include primary keywords – but not too many; and use hyphens, not underscores.

For example, an image of St John’s Cathedral in Brisbane at sunrise could have a filename of, “st-johns-cathedral-brisbane-sunrise.jpg”

The main keywords are St John’s Cathedral, so we put them at the beginning of the file name. This will help the image show up in searches for “St John’s Cathedral.” The cathedral is in Brisbane and the photo was taken at sunrise, so include those keywords to be descriptive, and to help the image appear in searches for “Brisbane,” “sunrise,” and “Brisbane sunrise.”

4. Alt tag

Alt tag text is shown if an image fails to display, if images are disabled in a browser, and is read to visually impaired visitors on your site.

It’s also a great opportunity for SEO. Use keywords to show the image’s relevance to the page content, but only if it actually describes the image. For example, “Dog eating a cupcake at New Farm Park in Brisbane.”

Unnecessarily filling your alt tags with keywords is keyword stuffing, and can be viewed as spam. Don’t push it, as you may attract penalties from Google.

5. Image description

Image descriptions are similar to Alt tags, but an extra level of detail. For example, “a Doberman eating a pink cupcake with rainbow sprinkles at New Farm park on a sunny Brisbane day.”

Although image descriptions can be helpful for similar reasons to alt tags, they are not as relevant for SEO.

6. Image captions

According to Kissmetrics, image captions are read 300% more than the actual body copy. This presents a huge opportunity to increase engagement and reduce bounce rate. Quick little tip: a headline below an image can serve as an effective caption.

Captions, being so close to the image, can provide extra context, not only for your readers, but also for Google (remember point 1?). The caption copy should be relevant to the image and entice the reader – serving humans and Google.

7. Eat some corn chips

Well, we got through that so efficiently that we now have a little spare time to go eat some corn chips. Go on, you’ve earned it.

And you’ll need it before you go and optimise all your images!

Corn chips to help this copywriter optimise images for SEO

NB: Technically, eating corn chips isn’t a form of image optimasation… but it can help you focus as you work to increase your online visibility… win? Yeah. BRB. I’m off to get some corn chips…