Did you know 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual? That’s a fun fact you can tell your co-workers at the water cooler in about 15 minutes from now. It’s because of this that visual content is so important to a company’s website.
Web pages made entirely of text are less dynamic (and even less user-friendly) according to the rules of search algorithms. When a search bot scans your pages for information, one of the things they are looking for is different sources of media on your website.
Quick Tip: Simply having media elements present will increase your rank.
So having images on your site is a must, but now you have to think, “Are the images on my site fully optimized for SEO?” Well if you’re asking yourself what fully optimized for SEO” even means, here’s a quick brief:
There are hundreds of factors that go into a search algorithm and some of those have to do with the technical aspects of images on your website. Making sure these technical aspects are correct and being utilized properly will help increase your page rank in search engine results. That’s why we created a list of 4 things to consider when optimizing an image for SEO.
4 Things to Consider When Optimizing an Image
1. File name
Image SEO starts with the right file name. This is a major factor and probably the most important factor for image SEO. First and foremost, never put underscores in the file name. This is the first location to use any keywords you identified to be valuable to your company. Without even looking at the actual image, you want Google to know what the image is about.
2. Scale for image SEO
Loading times are an important UX and therefore SEO aspect. The faster the site, the easier it is to visit and index. Images can have a major impact on loading times, especially when you load a huge image and show it really small, like using a 1500×1500 pixels image and showing it at 150×150 pixels size. The entire image size will still have to be loaded. You’ll want to make sure you scale the image to the size you want to show.
3. Reduce file size
The next step in image SEO should be to make sure that the scaled image is served in the smallest file size possible. There are tools for that: Firework, Pixlr.com, Photoshop, etc. If you’re in Firework or Photoshop, saving it for web and devices helps keep your file size low. Of course you could just export the image and test what percentage of quality is acceptable, but we would recommend using 100% quality images.
4. Don’t forget about the Alt Text
The alt text is added to an image so there will be a descriptive text when the image for whatever reason can’t be displayed to the visitor. It’s basically for situations where the image is not available to the reader. Possibly because they have images turned off in their settings or they could be using a screen reader due to a visual impairment. Again, try implementing keywords and make sure it relates to/describes the image.
What to Do Now
So now maybe now you have to go through your website and optimize your photos. Or you have to change your process for finding and saving images for your pages and/or blogs. Either way, I can tell you that the outcome will be positive. Over time these changes will help increase your website’s SEO value, which will lead to more organic visitors, which then creates more leads with the potential to become actual customers...and that’s the goal right?
