Search engine optimization is not just conducting keyword research, formatting content, and uploading it to the website. Rather, it is an act of aligning every element on a site according to the search engine’s guidelines. Optimizing visual content also comes under these instructions.
The rising trend of reverse image search has also made it necessary to optimize the visual content of a website. Undermining the image optimization means losing a chance to appear in visual searches. In contrast, appearing in picture searches can generate additional traffic for your website.
Therefore, you must consider making visual content on your website SEO-friendly. However, the question arises: What should you do to improve image SEO? Well, don’t worry. We have crafted this guide to help you straighten up visuals to meet search engines’ demands.
Ready to dive in? Let’s roll.
Choose The Right File Format
Downloading or creating an image and uploading it as it is without knowing what is its format, is a bad SEO practice. Some file formats consume large space that lowers the load speed of the images. Therefore, wisely select the format that does not affect the image’s performance.
Usually, JPEG and PNG are considered the ideal formats for website pictures. Both are suitable for every kind of picture, such as portraits, infographics, product images, illustrations, etc. However, PNG is more appropriate if you need to upload crisp and transparent visuals.
Employ High-Definition Visuals
Whenever a user makes a text-based search or reverse image search, search engines prefer to show high-quality visuals on top. The reason why they do this is that it becomes simple for them to scan high-definition pictures while generating search results for a query. You can check out on Wikipedia as well for employ high definition visuals guide.
Therefore, wherever you upload a picture to your website, make sure that it is of fine resolution. Whatever type of visual content you create or source, it should have exceptional clarity and details. Such visuals also enhance the user experience, which is an essential ranking factor in SEO.
Utilize Compressed Visuals
Since you have to use high-quality visuals, they often have a heavy size that slows down the page load speed. Search engines avoid ranking visuals that take a long time to get visible. Therefore, before uploading any visual, compress their size to enable them to load fast.
You can find many online tools on the internet that shrink image size for you. However, make sure that you compress the size using a reliable and efficient tool. If you unwittingly use an inefficient tool, the quality of your visual might get distorted which is unsuitable.
Use Descriptive Alt Tags
An alt tag is the rich textual information that tells search engines what is in a visual. It helps them understand the context of the image. This information enables them to find the most relevant results against a text or image query.
So, if you want your site’s visual content to be listed in search results, label them with proper alt tags. For this purpose, ensure using descriptive text in alt tags that provide meaningful details to search engines. Also, you can include the main keyword in the alt tag to make the visuals more discoverable.
Implement Structured Data Markup
Structured data serves as an additional layer of information for search engines. It lets them know which elements are listed on your website and what they are for. These details enable search engines to crawl and index visual content on your website more accurately.
Also, they prefer showing up such visuals in search results from the image search engine over those missing structured data. That’s why markup every picture on your site with structured data to enhance its discoverability in SERP results. For this purpose, you can use Schema markup to provide key details about your visuals.
Include Images in Your Sitemap
A sitemap is a detailed document or page that lists and provides information about various pages, content, and structure of that website.
It indicates the path to search engines for crawling and tells them where an element is located on a site and what is its relation with the page.
Adding images to the sitemap means you notify search engines how many visuals are present on your site and what their location is. As a result, your images are more likely to get crawled and indexed by search engines. This ultimately enhances the probability of them being visible in search results.
To Sum Up
In short, image optimization keeps you ahead of the curve in this highly competitive digital world. Optimizing the images can bring traffic to your site through both textual and visual searches.
Above, we have thoroughly explained how you can properly optimize the visual content of your website. We have listed some practical tips that enable you to noticeably transform your image SEO. So, stop wasting time and start implementing those techniques today to shine in search results.
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