Image Optimization: Optimize Images For Search Engines

Here comes the 7^th part of the series Summarized SEO world and it’s about optimizing the images for better SEO of your websites or blogs.

As we all know that content is indeed the first thing which helps a site to rank well for targeted keywords but images are also important to make a site look attractive and beautiful.  The problem is Search engine bots don’t understand images like text but there are ways through which we can make an image searchable for certain keywords and to do this we need to optimize the image using keywords. Here again text plays an important role

! Text is always important!

=> First question, Why we do we use images if SEs give preference to text only?

Ans:- Because images are self explanatory and its very rightly said that an image says thousands word. Also images make a website look attractive and more explanatory.

=> Second question, If Search engines don’t understand images  then how can we make use of them for SEO?

Ans:- Yes images are not being understood like text but we can make them eradable with some keywords by proper optimization technique.

Lets check out how to optimize images for better SEO:

As we have already discussed above that images are not being read by SEs because they index anything which are in text format? Even the text inside the images is not being read by SEs as they are just part of image but we can help search engines to understand about the images by writing proper image name(file name), image title and alt text.

Now let’s understand the same in Detail:

Image name (file name):- Whenever we download or buy images, you can see the file name  like 123.jpg or some random words which are not beneficial for our website’s SEO. Normally the people, who are not aware of SEO stuffs, just upload the image as it is which is  big mistake!
We need to change the image name and write something which include our targeted keywords such as If I am writing a post about SEO tips then I would like to use an image that shows SEO related graphics and I would be using an image name like seotips.jpg or seo-tips.jpg, seo.jpg or something of this sort instead of just 43243.jpg or absjahsd.jpg etc.

This will help that image to be searchable by search engines when someone performs the search query as  seo tips or seo.  There are more chance for this image to be found.

!Always give a name to your image before uploading it on the website or blog!

Alt Text:- When It comes to image optimization for search engines then Alt text is one of the most important thing to discuss.
Alt is an attribute used for images to define them. Actually Alt text stands for alternate text, it shows when images don’t load because of slow internet connection or user blocked graphics on their system. In this situation they can see the alt text given to the images and get an idea what is the image all about. Also it helps search engines to recognize the that image and so that they can show the image when someone search the words which matches with the alt text given to that image

How to write alt text:-

<img src=”Image url” alt=”alt text here”/>

<img src=”https://stoogles.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/url-optimization-tips.jpg” alt=”url-optimization”/>

Image Titles:- Add relevant image titles as they show when a user mouse over on the image. It might be helpful at times.

To read more on Alt text please consider this post:-

What is alt text and why it is important

How to write Title text:-

<img src=”Image url” title=”alt text here”/>

<img src=”https://stoogles.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/url-optimization-tips.jpg” title=”url-optimization”  />

These are the basic things to know while doing image optimization for search engines as well as users.

P.S. Optimization doesn’t mean to optimize anything just for SEO but for users experience too. Apart from all these tips, I would like to suggest you to use either royalty free images or purchased images. If there is need to give credit to the image create then don’t hesitate to give the credit.

[Image Credit]