Important Image Optimization SEO Tips You Need to Know

Image plays an important role in your online presence. It not only attracts the visitors but also engages them, making them spend more time on your site. The image helps you in improving the rank of your site on various search engines including Google.

Image optimization refers to reducing your image’s file size in a way that it does not sacrifice its quality. This optimization aims of reducing the loading time of the web page.

A few tips are there which can help you in Image Optimization:

Use Original Images: Originality is always pleasing and paying. While repeated images bore the visitors and make them walk away from your page, original gives a better and refreshing experience. The original image can be taken from a high-quality camera or can be designed. The high-quality image helps you in gaining ranks on search engines by attracting more traffic to your site.

Choose right file name: The file name of your image helps Google in identifying what your image is all about without a need to look at it and hence using the key phrase of your image is always a good idea.

Create descriptive alt text: For reading the text linked to an image, search engines rely on the image’s caption, its file name, and alt text etc. as they don’t determine the text written on your images. Descriptive content in the alt text helps search engine in understanding the content of the image.

Let's take a look at the source code of an alt attribute.

Alt Attribute

Check Copyright: Make sure that the image you are using is free from copyright conflicts. Using a copyrighted image without the license can cost you land you in some unwanted legal hassle. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), you could be issued a notice if you have violated any copyright issuesA free image may not suit your requirement the best; it is always the safest to choose.

Use Responsive images: These days, people use different devices to operate a single website like mobile, laptop, and I Pad etc. and so your website and all its content need to be responsive to all these devices. Irresponsive images and contents not only ruin the visitor’s experience but also affect your site rankings.

Improve Images: There are various tools available in the market that adds personality and life to your dull images. These tools make your images comparatively more appealing.

Image Sitemap: Image sitemap houses all your images at one place which increases the chances of your images getting displayed at the top in the results of search engines.

For WordPress sites, the creation and implementation of image sitemaps are easy through the WordPress plugin, “Google XML Sitemap for Images,” which automatically creates the sitemap for images uploaded to your WordPress Media Library.