SEO, or search engine optimization, is critical for marketers. When you optimize your web pages, including your blog posts, you increase the visibility of your website to people who use search engines (such as Google) to find your product or service.
But, does your blog content actually help your company rank organically on search engines?
This article will provide the answer to this question as well as others. Prepare for an in-depth look at the world of blog SEO, the factors that influence it, and how to begin optimizing your blog site for search engines.
Optimizing Images for SEO
Images are critical for making your content more accessible, appealing, and engaging to users, but they are also important for SEO. For starters, they provide important contextual information to search engines. Second, optimized images increase page loading speed, which boosts user engagement and searches engine rankings.
To give your brand the best chance of success with SEO, you should understand the fundamentals of image optimization. Image optimization refers to the process of creating and delivering high-quality images in the optimal format, size, and resolution in order to increase user engagement.
It also entails accurately labeling images so that search engine crawlers can read them and understand the context of the page.
Why should you optimize your blog images?
Whether you’re a blogger or a news article writer, you’ve probably considered including relevant images to enhance the impact of your text.
Images not only help your readers understand what you’re saying, but they also help to spice up seemingly boring words and make your digital media posts more appealing.
Google’s vision for the future of search encourages the use of images to drive traffic to your posts. Google Images recently revamped its interface and made new filters, attributions, and metadata available to users.
Isn’t it demonstrating that the world’s most popular search engine understands what an image is and how it fits into context?
When an image is perfectly optimized, it increases the visibility of the site and brings in a large number of new visitors. In a broader sense, image optimization SEO is a critical component of website SEO because images generate high-quality content that influences your website’s ranking in Google search.
If you want to benefit from image SEO, you should help search engines discover your images and list them with the appropriate keywords.
How to Optimize Blog Images For High Search Engine Rankings?
Image SEO is made up of several components. With Google improving its recognition of image elements on a daily basis, it makes sense to ensure that the image and all of its elements contribute to a good user experience as well as SEO. It would be irresponsible to try to fool Google.
When adding an image to an article, keep these things in mind.
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Choose the right filename
The file name is the first step in image SEO. Use your focus key in the image file name if you want Google to know what the image is about without even looking at it.
It’s simple: if you’re writing an article about Notre Dame and use an image of a sunrise over Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the file name shouldn’t be DSC4536.jpg. A proper file name would be notre-dame-Paris-sunrise.jpg, with the main subject of the photo (and your article) at the start.
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Choose the right format
The right format for images does not exist; it is determined by the type of image and how it will be used. In a nutshell, we advise you to:
- Choose JPEG for larger photos or illustrations: it will give you good results in terms of colours and clarity with a relatively small file size; use PNG if you want to keep your image’s background transparency;
- Instead of JPEG and PNG, use WebP. It will produce high-quality results while keeping file sizes to a minimum. You can convert your image to WebP using tools such as Squoosh.
- For logos and icons, use SVG. You can manage images in SVG format using CSS or JavaScript, for example, resize them without losing quality.
The most popular image format is 4:3. You should keep a strategic distance from large and high formats because there is a chance that the image will be cut off on one side.
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Resize your images
The size of an image and the size of a file are not the same thing. The dimensions of an image are referred to as its image size (e.g., 1024 by 680 pixels). The file size is the amount of space required on the server to store it (e.g., 350 kilobytes).
Images with higher resolution and larger dimensions (often created with a professional camera) significantly slow down page load times. While they work well for print reproduction, they must be scaled down without losing too much quality to work well on the web.
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Choose the right compression rate
When an image is overly compressed, the file size is reduced but the image quality suffers. When using a low compression rate, the image quality is high, but the file size is enormous.
Ideally, you should try different file types and compression rates to see what works best for each image. Many image-editing software programs, including Adobe Photoshop, have a “save for web” option that automatically reduces file size while optimizing image quality.
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Use alt tags
Viewers may understand what a picture is about, but search engine spiders require additional information. Without alternative text, search engines cannot accurately index your image content. A good alt tag provides context while also assisting visually impaired users.
Even if images don’t load due to a bug, search engines can still read an alternative text to help rank a page. To increase visibility, include brand-relevant words here. Just stay away from keyword stuffing.
Give more information than you did in the file name. While there is no perfect number of words, aim for 10 to 15 to convey something about the image.
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Add captions
Image captions – the words directly beneath images – may not have a direct impact on SEO, but they are visible on a website page, unlike file names and alt text. As a result, they can improve the user experience. The majority of people are drawn to image captions to get a sense of the overall content. Without image captions, your bounce rate may increase, reducing your search engine credibility.
Captions beneath images are read 300 percent more than body copy, so not using them, or using them incorrectly, means passing up an opportunity to engage a large number of potential readers.
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Use mobile responsive images
This is also important for SEO, and if you’re using WordPress, it’s already done for you because it’s included by default since version 4.4. Images should have the srcset attribute, which allows you to serve a different image depending on the width of the screen — this is especially useful for mobile devices.
Benefits of Image SEO
When an image is perfectly optimized, it raises the site’s visibility and attracts a large number of new visitors. Image optimization SEO is a critical component of website SEO in general because images generate high-quality content that influences your website’s ranking in Google search.
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Better visibility
Image SEO raises the visibility of images in Google image search results. If the images are particularly relevant to a specific search query, they may also be displayed in a general Google search.
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Increased traffic
A high image ranking generates a lot of traffic to your website. Use appealing images to capture the user’s attention and increase image clicks to generate more traffic.
Image optimization is important because images influence users’ purchasing decisions, so image optimization is especially beneficial for e-commerce websites.
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Google evaluation for thematic context
Google can easily comprehend the thematic context of any image on a website or the entire website using Image SEO, and as a result, it provides better rankings.
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Improved user experience
Image SEO also improves the user experience by reducing loading time. It is especially important in mobile optimization because mobile loading speeds are typically slower than those available on the desktop.
Where to find the right image?
Aside from text, images are the most important components of any website. They not only make your page and post more appealing, but they also play an important role in increasing the user’s curiosity and helping them understand better.
Furthermore, product images encourage users to make quick decisions when shopping online.
Furthermore, Google ranks textual content with images higher than textual content without images. As a result, Google Image content is an important ranking foundation for any website. Image optimization works in tandem with website optimization to achieve a higher ranking.
You can find Royalty-Free images for your blog on the following websites:
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Unsplash
All of the photos on Unsplash can be used for free. They can be used for both commercial and noncommercial purposes. It is not necessary to obtain permission from or credit the photographer or Unsplash, though it is appreciated when possible.
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Pixabay
Except in the cases specified in “What is not allowed,” all content on Pixabay can be used for free for commercial and noncommercial purposes in print and digital formats.
Quick Links
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PRO TIP: ALWAYS USE IMAGES!
When used correctly, images can help readers understand your article. The old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” may not apply to Google, but it is certainly true when you need to spice up 1,000 dull words, illustrate what you mean in a chart or data flow diagram, or simply make your social media posts more appealing.
It’s a simple suggestion: include images in every article you write to make it more appealing.
