Image Optimization Tips: Why you must optimize every images you use in your website or blog?
On-page SEO Benefits of properly optimized pictures attached to your blog posts.
How to better optimize your blog post images using Alt tags and Meta codes. Optimization tools for images to be used for any content.
Rank your blogsite even in Image search engines, like Google Images, flickr.com, picfog.com, pinterest.com, Stumbleupon.com, etc. Interesting and nicely optimized Images can help your blog in getting extra traffic and rankings. So, never ignore this aspect of your web, and always consider it important as it is also one of the very helpful tools used while promoting your blogs.
This is another add-on post in the series of on-page Search Engine Optimization techniques to improve search engine rankings of any blog or website.
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| Image optimization 5 tips for improving SEO for your blog or website |
Whether you are blogging on Blogspot, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Tumblr, or any website made on PhP, Html, you must have noticed that images and pictures are a very integral part of any CMS (content Management System) Platform.
That’s why most of the popular CMS platforms provide special features for using images on your blog posts.
WordPress is one such platform where image optimization has found a special attention.
You can not only easily use Alt, Title, Caption tags to your submitted images, but also SEO tags, such as Meta title+description+keyword tags as well.
Benefits of using Well Optimized Images on your Blog:
- Usage of well optimized images in your blog posts could be the reason to extra-enhanced visibility of your content, and hence an added boost search engine ranking and traffic for your site.
- Various major and small search engines are always eager to discover new images whenever found. So, this could be site wide very beneficial.
- Using keywords in your images improves the over all keyword optimization for any blog post.
- You can get free backlinks and referral traffic by just posting your images in many of image search engine sites. Like, Pinterest, Flickr, Likes.com, allow a link back to your image post.
- Image optimization helps in making indexing of your content easier and faster by Google and other image search engines.
5 Ways to Optimize Images for Better SEO:
Most online marketers place a lot of emphasis on the keyword text when they want to optimize content for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
What they fail to realize is the fact that images too need to be optimized for SEO to ensure the site ranks high among search engines.
Over the past four months, Google has made about 10 algorithm changes. In addition to that, keyword data is increasingly becoming harder to find and therefore it is important for marketers to find other ways of optimizing content for SEO.
So, what are some of the ways in which you can optimize images for better SEO?
1) Use Keyword rich Image File Names
Use descriptive words that describe what the image is all about.
It is best practice to use 2 to 5 word names that are separated by hyphens (-).
Ensure the name you give the image relates to what the image represents and avoid being metaphorical.
When people search for the images, they need to be able to make a guess of what image they are looking for.
Remember, the browser outputs what you have uploaded so be careful with the naming.
Use keyword rich name for your blog images.
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2) Always use Alt tag/ Text for your blog images
An alt text is an alternative text’ that search engines use to understand the images.
In other words, it is used to give the search engine more information concerning the image. You cannot underestimate the importance of alt texts in optimizing images for your blog.
Alt texts are a great opportunity to expound on the file name. An alt text would look something like this;
<img src=”playing-kitten.jpg” alt=”kitten playing”/>
An alt text is important because, while the file name helps identify the file itself, the alt text helps the search engine interpret what the file name says for optimization.
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3) Provide relevantly keyword rich captions to every Images in your posts
In case a search engine such as Google comes across an image that has no description from either the file name or an alt text, it tries to identify the content of the image by scrutinizing the image surrounding.
This is where captions come in. However, captions are not a must-have for optimizing images especially if you already have a file name and an alt text, but it is always safe to have it, especially since you have nothing to lose by including it.
Besides that, you may use captions to credit the image source if it is necessary.
Image captions are one of the most read pieces of information after the headline, so make sure you include it to optimize your ranking.
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4) Image file size – use images that load faster
The time it takes for a page to load is very important in SEO. With this in mind, you might want to ensure your image sizes are as small as possible to reduce the time it takes to load a page.
Remember not to compromise on quality while you are at it.
Several other factors would affect the time taken for a browser to fully load a page but the images take the center stage.
It is advisable to use the web formatted JPG format for images since these will automatically be formatted to fit the page without compromising the quality.
Also, you may use an image editing software to resize your image accordingly before uploading it as this helps to maintain the quality of the image on a web page.
Use this Image optimization tool to lower the image size of any type of pictures.
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5) Image resolution
Your website’s design will also affect its SEO rankings. Search engines such as Google take into account the User Experience (UX).
Sites with better user UX will be ranked higher than those with poor UX.
It is, therefore, important to use an image resolution that corresponds with the site’s context.
For instance, for a photography website, you may use large full screen images for better UX.
On the other hand, for a website that is predominantly text based, large full screen images may not be a good idea because it does not correspond with the context of the site.
These five tips will help you develop a fully optimized SEO friendly blog and put you above all the other blogs in Search Engine rankings.
[ Related Article- 45 SEO Tips for Blogging with On-page and Off-page Optimization ]
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