If you thing SEO for images can only impact the visibility and search results of the images in question then think again. Image SEO is really important for one other reason as well: images are extremely crucial in enhancing a page’s visual appeal thereby making your content more attractive. It is also a major part of On-page optimization; Image SEO can also impact your pages as well as your website’s rankings. But how exactly do you go about it? Here are the top 10 tips that can greatly elevate your Image SEO to the next level and in turn optimize your content so that it has improved chances of ranking higher.

Do right by choosing the right format

It’s important that you first choose the right file type before uploading them left, right, and centre. While there are many, JPEG and PNGs are the most preferred ones. While PNGs will give you the best quality, they will also increase the file size. JPEGs on the other hand are all about finding a balance between quality and size.

Image compression is important

Uncompressed images can easily bloat up our website and increase its load time, which in turn can lead to high bounce rate and impact its SERP rankings. Since images, on average, make up for more than 20% of a website’s weight, it’s important that you first compress them to an appropriate size. This will greatly shorten your load time and improve its rankings.

Creating unique images will take you places

While we agree it depends on the kind of content you are creating and also on the budget, but if you can, create or choose images that aren’t downloaded from stock imagery by the dozen. Even a properly optimized stock image that is generically used by thousands of websites such as yours just won’t have the same impact.

Be wary of the copyright issue

Many continue to download images from Google searches and post them on their website. Some even get away with it. But if you own a legit business and don’t want your customers to see you in a bad light, always be wary of the copyright act that can be issued against you. Always used properly licensed images from the stock archives and rid yourself of the worries.

Create keyword-rich file names

And image name that reads IMG_4055 is gibberish to Google and other search engines. Yes, keywords have a role to play outside of the web too. To ensure users can also be directed to your website via your images that appear in the searches, you must rename each of them to include the target keyword. It will allow Google to understand the subject matter better and in turn, rank better.

Write Relevant ALT Tags

You can optimize your web pages all you want but once in a while, the whole page doesn’t render as fluently and can cause images to not load properly or go missing altogether. This is where ALT Tags come into play, as they describe the nature of the image in question and help search engine crawl and rank them as per merit, so to speak.

Relevant Page Title is equally important

In the past, Google has confirmed that it uses Page Titles as well as Page Descriptions when evaluating images for image searches. And that is why almost all your On-page SEO factors, including Page Titles and Meta Tags should directly be in tune with the images on your website for Google to rank them accordingly.

Mobile-friendly images are SEO-friendly

If it hasn’t been said enough, here’s one more time. Websites that aren’t optimized for mobiles and other handheld devices will soon have to bite the dust as Google is on its way to implementing 100% mobile-first index. Along with other factors on your website, the images too need to be responsive in order to be mobile-friendly and be ranked better.

Add images to the sitemap

You can expect more traffic to your site if you add images from your websites to the sitemap or create a new sitemap altogether for images. Doing so will greatly improve the chances of your images being properly crawled and indexed by Google and other search engines.

Add structured data markup

In simple words, Structure Data is information or data from your website that is properly structured, whose major purpose is to display specific information in a visually appealing manner by way of rich results. It allows Google to display just the right image along with other structured data such as price, dimensions etc. to the user.

Make sure you follow all of the above tips diligently before you start uploading images to your website. Keep the key takeaways in mind: use file type intelligently, compress, use apt file name and ALT Tags, and go all out in making your images responsive and your site mobile-friendly.