Tips and Techniques to Optimize Images for SEO

Are images the last straw holding you back from significant SEO success? Businesses should not overlook the significance of image optimization. By using proper image file formats, resizing and compressing images, using alt tags, creative descriptive file names, and more, marketers can enhance their SEO efforts and improve a site’s overall online presence. Proper image optimization contributes to faster loading times, better user experience, and increased organic traffic from search engines.

Are you convinced? Here is our checklist to help you create sustainable workflows around image optimization that will serve you now and well into the future.

1. Use proper image file formats. JPEGs work well for photographs, and PNGs are ideal for images with transparency. Choosing the correct format ensures a balance between image quality and file size, which affects a site’s loading speed.
2. Resize and compress images as needed. Be sure to resize images to match the required display size for a given screen size of the site template. Then, compress your images to reduce file size – which is essential for faster page loading.
3. Make effective use of alt tags. Adding descriptive and relevant alt tags to images is crucial for SEO. Alt tags provide context to search engines about the content of the image, making it more accessible to users with visual impairments and improving keyword relevance.
4. Establish SEO-friendly naming conventions. Using descriptive and keyword-rich file names for all your images is important. Meaningful file names provide search engines with additional context about the image’s content.
5. Including captions and relevant text near images can further enhance SEO. Captions offer still more context to users and search engines.
6. Optimize images for mobile devices to improve the overall experience. Mobile-friendly image optimization is crucial for SEO.
7. Consider creating image sitemaps to help search engines discover and index images on your website more efficiently. Including image URLs in sitemaps ensures better visibility of images in search results.

If you feel like the list of SEO best practices is never-ending, you’re not alone. ASTRALCOM has helped dozens of small and midsize businesses navigate the complex, ever-changing world of SEO, from image optimization to local search. We’re here to help you determine your digital strategy from start to finish.