What is Image Optimization in SEO? Learn its Importance 

Every website needs to present its content with appealing visuals to attract visitors. For a website to rank high in search engines, every aspect matters, including images. Content marketers and SEO experts prefer uploading top-quality pictures on your website. Further, it helps in quick site load speed and an increase in web traffic.

In the past few years, there has been a rise in presenting information visually to rank the website on Google’s image. Proper image optimization decreases page load time and raises page ranking.

SEO-optimized images with relevant text encourage the user to explore the website further. Both visible and unseen factors are crucial to image optimization. For instance, in an e-commerce website, images are vital to attracting visitors to buy the product.

This is where image optimization comes into the role of helping to turn the visitor into a buyer. The concept of image optimization in SEO involves making your website’s images simple to “read” and “find.” Optimization or SEO image enhances user experiences, content visibility, and Google rankings.

Through this article, let’s discuss image optimization tips for better SEO, working on image file size, and its importance for the website.

What Is SEO Image Optimization?

SEO image optimization is a complete process of using high-quality images while the search engine guideline increases site traffic.

The image optimization process involves two ways: resizing and caching.

• Image resizing means decreasing or increasing the size while maintaining the best quality.
• Caching involves storing picture files in the browser cache. It helps in increasing the page load speed.

With many different factors involved in this, SEO image optimization is turning into a vital aspect.

Why is SEO Image Optimization Important?

Google estimates that millions of people use Google Images daily to search for a product or service. According to Google Analytics, there has been a rise in image search since Google changed the “View Image” button from Image Search and now to “Visit [Page].” The host pages’ content was more visible as a result. We should use images as a traffic source as they are significant.

By optimizing image size, the site speed increases, and page load time decreases, which attracts visitors. The page load times decrease by optimizing your photos. Since users wait 2 seconds for a page to load, visitors are more likely to stay on your website. The longer people stay on your site, the higher the site’s readership.

Let us now learn Why SEO is Image Optimization important for websites-

• Increases Page Load Speed

Page load speed is the time a web page takes to open. It relies on various variables, including your website host, style & design of your website. 

Websites that load in under two seconds are the ones that users prefer the most. Thus, once you optimize the image for SEO, it will help to increase the speed of your website. Using the right tools can help you get page speed insight.

A website with an easy and user-friendly page will allow visitors to check and buy. Besides other factors, the image also plays a crucial role in page load speed. A well-optimized SEO image will help the page load. There are various tools available to measure the speed of your web page, including Website Analyzer, Web Page Test, and Google’s Page Speed Insights.

• Improves SEO Ranking

From the right image size to alt text, an optimized image will help in improving the SEO ranking of your site. In today’s digital marketing era, every marketer knows the significance of search ranking. Who would not want their website pages to rank high? 

One of the contributing factors to this is how your website loads and how well you optimize images. Image optimization is critical in this context.

• Drives in Traffic

When we click on one image, we see similar theme images. It is an effective method and can bring viewers to your site through images. The goal of a search engine is to return accurate matches for user input. It is workable via a process known as crawling. 

Moreover, bots use the crawling technique to browse a list of well-known websites with links.

Giving an image of a name that applies will also aid in matching the user with your image. Search engines will recognize your image if you include alt text with each photo. Choosing the right words to describe an image can take more work than it seems.

If you want alt text to describe the image, you must be general. All these factors relate to driving traffic to your site. From alt text to understanding the bots will help SEO marketers bring traffic to the site.

• Boosts Conversion

If your search ranking increases, you can attract more users and increase transactions. Conversions and SEO ranking correlate with page load speed. You need to work on the image sitemap and use a content delivery network that would help boost conversion.

• Enhancing User Engagement

A website with a good user experience will stay in the SEO ranking. It may also be your website. You need to optimize images on your website to increase page load time and enhance user experience. You need to ensure images are attractive and clear enough to bring in the attention of viewers.

The bounce rate for web pages that load in 2.4 seconds is 24%. Additionally, a faster page load time increases the likelihood that visitors will return to your website and make extra purchases.

How to SEO Optimize your Website Images?

If you want your website to rank higher, and increase web traffic and engagement, below are some solid tips to SEO optimize your website images-

• Naming Image Files Naturally

Naming your web images is the best approach to optimizing with SEO. Use simple names and the right keywords for the image, which will help in bringing traffic to the site. 

Suppose you have an online store selling handcrafted jewelry,  including earrings. For one of the images you have mentioned, “Silver Blanket,”:

Instead, you can also name it”image17797.jpg” or “earrings-seed-beads-woven.jpg” by using the right keywords matching the search terms that potential shoppers would use to hunt for your products.

Additionally, alt text and title attributes enhance the user experience by helping images rank higher in searches. This increases the page’s relevance and adds beauty to the website details.

• Optimizing your Alt Attributes

When a browser cannot render pictures, alt attributes serve as a text substitute or alternative text. They are used for accessing the web. If you hover your mouse over an image, you will see the alt attribute text or alt tags.

Your website’s alt property improves its SEO value. You can improve your website ranking by giving the images alt attributes containing keywords. Using alt attributes is the best way to ensure that your e-commerce products appear in Google images and web search results.

Here are some tips you need to consider-

• Describe your images in simple terms, like how you named your image file names.

• Use model or serial numbers in your alt attributes if you offer products that have them.

• Do not overuse terms in your alt attributes

• Right Image Size and Format

Utilizing a variety of formats can assist you in managing the weight of your website. There are different types of formats you can select depending on the image size. SVG is an excellent choice for logos and icons. Also, it is lightweight and compatible with pictures and many colors.

PNG is the heaviest kind and works well with images with a transparent backdrop. The most famous image format is JPG/JPEG, which supports various colors and details. To prevent making the page heavy, you should keep JPG photos under 100 KB and 1920 px in size.

When saving a huge image, you can use the progressive JPG setting, which causes the photos to load. A webpage takes longer to load when the file sizes are larger. In case your website loads faster, there will be fewer visitors leaving your site. 

The “Save for Web” command in Adobe Photoshop is one approach that will help resize an image file. When using this command, you should consider image quality when adjusting the image to the smallest file size possible.

• Using effective Digital Asset Management Solutions

A digital asset management solution can assist with picture optimization and image library organization. A decent DAM solution will help you manage your photographs by tagging them with the appropriate, searchable keywords.

• Optimizing Thumbnails

Thumbnail photos are used on different e-commerce websites, particularly on category pages. They display things without consuming a lot of space. Thumbnails are great but use them with caution, as they can affect web traffic. 

Typically, thumbnails are displayed at pivotal times during the shopping experience. If the loading of your category pages loads slowly, you might lose a potential customer and your website SEO will suffer. Image compression can help the site to load faster.

Here is what you can do

Reduce the size of your thumbnail files as much as you can. Here, it could be worthwhile to sacrifice quality for a smaller file size. Remember that the total effect of your thumbnails will significantly affect how quickly your page loads and how to optimize your website.

• Using Image Sitemaps

Image sitemaps will assist Google in recognizing the image, especially if your website uses JavaScript galleries, image pop-ups, or other “flashy” methods to enhance the shopping experience.

Web crawlers or bots do not crawl over web pages where there is no direct reference in the source code of the image. Therefore, you must include a location for hard-to-know photos on an image sitemap to inform crawlers about them.

Google has several guidelines for publishing images that could raise the SERP ranking of your website. Additionally, by providing Google with more details about web photos through Google sitemaps, you can make it easier for Google to find more of your photographs than it otherwise would.

• Avoid Using Decorative Images

You will find decorative Google images on search engines, including backgrounds, buttons, and borders. Any graphic or image not tied to a product is considered decorative. Even having professional images can enhance a web page’s aesthetic appeal. Use a template that reduces file sizes and check the file sizes of all the decorative images on your website.

Here are a few things you can do-

• Create simple patterns or border graphics as PNG-8 or GIF files. Use a few hundred bytes to make pleasing graphics.

• Whenever possible, generate colored areas using CSS rather than pictures. The best you can do is, replace any decorative images with CSS styling.

• Use CDN Wisely

CDN (Content Delivery Networks) is the go-to place for hosting images and media files. They can speed up website load times and assist with bandwidth problems. The only drawback here is its backlinks. Backlinks are essential for SEO, and the more backlinks your site has, the better it will rank in the search engine. 

By uploading your photos to a CDN, you are shifting the file from your domain to the CDN’s domain. Therefore, when someone connects to your image, they link to the CDN site.

Takeaway

Using web images to boost your SEO is the aim of optimizing the same. The method of image optimization depends on us. Alt text and formatting are essential parts of optimizing photos. A well-structured image enables the site to load quickly. 

Moreover, SEO helps to identify your image by using alt text. Your website can be found more easily by indexing your image. Search engine optimization is the result of all of this. 

Google has made us aware of these elements to improve a website’s ranking. The higher the rank, the higher the chance of getting traffic. The key lesson for picture optimization is still a recurring one.

You need to work on specifications for images and their formatting for rich results. Although you may customize images for the web browsers you select, those browsers change in popularity over time. Images can now genuinely increase page rank and drive visitors to your content by having the potential to create permanence. Every website that wants to increase its SEO must optimize its photos to draw searches.

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