As we’ve mentioned before, SEO is always evolving, it’s an ever-changing landscape that isn’t always the easiest to keep up with.

There are still some consistencies within the environment, and best practices are still there to help you and your business succeed.

Image SEO is the act of optimising your images to help your web page rank higher, or to optimise an image for the image results page on a search engine.

Optimising your images is essential for your website, and often gets forgotten about.

So, what can you do to make sure that your images are search engine optimised?

Compress your images

Search engines will consider the image size when it comes to your image SEO.

Your web page load time will affect your ranking, and the bigger an image is, the longer it will take to load.

You need to find the perfect balance between file size and quality, as you don’t want to sacrifice quality and have a sloppy-looking image just to have the smallest file size possible.

Google, as an example, doesn’t look at individual image file sizes, but instead at the page as a whole.

So, you can prioritise your images and know which needs to be the highest quality, allowing you to mess around with different sizes.

There are online tools available to you to compress your images, you can also consider file sizes and the effect they have on your images.

Accurate alt text

Alt text on an image is helpful for various reasons, the first being accessibility.

This means that anyone using a screen reader can know what the image includes on a webpage, allowing the user to fully experience your website even if they can’t see it.

Alt text also helps search engines crawl your website and understand what it is a little bit better.  

This means that it can be indexed correctly, and helpful and accurate alt text helps your webpage’s ranking and increases the likelihood of you being featured on Google images.

To add alt text most beneficially, detail is the key.

Give lots of detail, this paints a more detailed picture for anybody using a screen reader or any accessibility needs, and it’s more specific and helps your SEO.

Having alt text is also helpful as a failsafe because if your image doesn’t load for any reason, alt text will tell the user what is supposed to be there.

Name your files

As well as alt text, file names can affect how crawlers will perceive your image.

This is why you should change the file name to something accurate, descriptive, and SEO friendly.

This also helps with being a result on the image page of a search engine.

If you take a picture for your website, the file name will typically be something along the lines of “IMG_1234”, which offers absolutely nothing to the search engine.

Rename it to something descriptive, this along with good alt text can help push your content up the image page.

Use unique images

To put it simply, search engines will prioritise organic and original images.

A stock image is never going to rank highly, as multiple pages will be using them.

As well as crawlers preferring original imagery, users will too.

If you use exclusively stock images and designs on your site, there’s no diversity or stand-out factors, you just look like another soulless corporation.

Even though the quality may not be as professional if you don’t have the equipment, original photos can make users feel more comfortable.

When it comes to graphics, there are plenty of design software and websites available to you that allow you to create your own, as well as plenty of graphic designers who can create something bespoke for you.

The more you research, the more factors come into play, but hopefully, these basic best practices will help you rise in the image ranks.

If your business needs help with SEO and marketing, contact our team.