Visuals, especially, the images have their own individual place in content creation and the SEO of a website. In fact, SEO has its separate technical wing for the image optimization that contributes to the SEO of a website. As images are more expressive and help to create beautiful websites, everyone likes to put them on the website, and also from the SEO point of view, these help in the ranking of the website, too.

Just using the images on the website does not work for the SEO, but defining the various attributes like alt text, captions, image name, etc., are the key to image SEO. Since the SE crawlers cannot see the images, these attributes help them to get all the details about the image and how it is related to the content of the website, resulting in a better ranking of the website in the searches.

So images are one of the important assets of SEO, and here are the tips that you can follow for the better image SEO:

1) High Quality & Original Images: Using high-quality images on a website makes the website look more attractive and enhances the user experience. Also when the images are original, i.e. belong to your company itself, it puts a great impact on the user of the site. Original images do not need a high-budget setup, but you can get those images by yourself using a good camera. And, for the infographics or other images, you can take the help of a good designer who can design high-quality pictures for you. Also, many website owners use stock photos on their website, which is great as they pay a good amount for those pictures. But do you know, there are other people also, who spent money on the same pictures? So to avoid any kind of duplicity, try to produce your own pictures for the website instead of taking them from any stock websites.

2) Relevant Images: Your website talks about selling clothes, but you have put the food pictures on it. Does it make any sense? No! Right? In the case of images, it is quite simple. The image must represent the context of the textual content on the web page. The images are more expressive and are helpful in simplifying the complex content into a simple form. Using wrong images on your website can turn off the visitors.

3) A Big No to the Copyright Images: The other reason to use original pictures, on your website, is to avoid the copyright conflict that can occur when you use some random pictures from the internet. Copyright claims on the images are not good for your website, and also for you, as you can get into an expensive lawsuit. The companies that own the pictures can issue a notice for not taking their permission to use the images, which is valid under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). And this is not only for the images, but the same goes for the other content on the website too.

But in any case you are unable to create relevant images for your content, you can simply search for copyright free images on Google (using the Usage Rights too in the Google search) or try to write down the credits for the pictures whenever you use them.

4) Choose the Right File Type: Choosing the right file type for the images is also another important part of Image SEO. Commonly, there are three most used file types, i.e., jpg, png and Gif. All the three types are slightly different from each other but fall in the same category. The png files render the highest resolution of all, but at the same time, they have the biggest file size too. So most of the people use the jpg format of the images, as they provide high resolution at the smaller file size. But in case of the designed graphics, both gif and png are the better choices. So try to choose the file type for the images according to the content on the website.

5) Image Size and Hosting: Another prime factor in Image SEO, is the size of an image, as the page load time for a website depends on it. The bigger size of the image is a major agent in slowing down the page load time for the website. According to the researches, on a new website, the users wait for the site to load only for ten seconds and leave the site immediately. So for better user engagement, one must maintain the page load time to its lowest. As image size plays a big role in the same, you must optimize the size of the image every time using a new image on the website. The images can be resized or compressed to an extent, using various tools, keeping the quality of the image intact.

6) Naming the Images: Naming the images might look an easy task, but then is also the most critical one. In the Image SEO, the name of the images has its own role to play. While naming the images, try to choose a name which is relevant to the content. Or you can simply use the target keyword along with the content related name of the image, making it a descriptive one. The image name is not visible to the users, but it is helpful in providing the content information to the search engines.

7) Captions & the Alt Text: Alt Text or the Alternate Text is another most important constituent in the Image SEO. Using the alt tags carefully is beneficial to the overall on-page SEO strategy. Most of the search engines are text-based, and when the image takes longer to load, or in the case, does not even display, it is the Alt text that appears on the screen, and the SE reads it. When there is no alt text given for the images, in the same situation, the screen appears as an empty space to the search engine, which affects the SEO of the website. Like the name of the image, the alt text also should be relevant to the content. You can create a descriptive alt text having SEO-friendly keywords in it.

8) Image Sitemap: For better SEO, creating a sitemap is a common thing, but did you know that Google also encourages creating a sitemap for the images used on the website for better search engine ranking? You can add the images to the sitemap, or you can create a separate sitemap for the images. It helps the search engines to add those images to the index, such that the images also show up in the searches. Using the image sitemap, the crawlers find those images and the information embedded with them, most likely. This increases the visibility of your images as well as the website on which those images have been used.

Following these tips, you can encourage your website’s load time, increase the visibility of the images in the searches, and most importantly, help in the Search Engine Optimaization of the website.