Image SEO Optimization – Improve your search rankings

People are finding my website from my images!

Yes that’s right.

Although my content is great (I hope), and my pages are SEO optimized, a lot of visitors are also coming from Google Image Search.

I knew SEO optimization for images was important, but until now I had did not know how useful it can be.

Below I will fill you in on all the details about optimizing images for SEO.

Not only does it bring more visitors to your site, but Google also uses the information in your images to rank your pages too!

Don’t miss out on easy SEO opportunities!

Your site is full of images.

Image SEO Optimization Factors

The most important parts of Image SEO optimization are the image filename and the alt tag on your page.

Image Filename

As strange as it might seem, the filename plays a role in Image SEO.

So please PAY ATTENTION to the following filename pointers!

1. Don’t  use just one word (or words together) to name your image files
2. Name/Describe the image well
3. Uses dashes/hyphens not underscores or pluses, to separate the words in the filename – (more details here from smart people)

A small detail about point 3:  Google sees dashes as word separators, and underscores as joiners so to Google: –

• Mad-Lemmings = Mad Lemmings
• Mad_Lemmings = MadLemmings

The Alt Tag/Attribute

It’s ok if you don’t know what an Alt tag is, let me explain.

The alt attribute is part of the image HTML tag.

It gives a description of the image to display if the image is not available OR if a text reader is used (like for vision impaired people – images are not shown to them obviously!).

But more importantly for the SEO and  images:

It is also used by Google to find out what your image is about.

So it important because it

• provides keyword relevance for your page/post on search
• helps rank your images on search result pages (SERP)
• adds another useful signal to Google in general

So what should we put in the alt tag of an image?

• Limit the text to 150 characters or less (the rest might not be read by the search engines)
• Put keywords more towards the beginning
• Try to write a relevant description which is also related to the page (if possible)
• Always use the alt attribute for images you want indexed in search engines (ie. images used in your sites background/construction etc can be ignored)

The following is an Alt tag checker for checking your webpages to ensure you have them all filled in.

Feedbot Alt Tag Checker

The Title

This is an other attribute of the Image HTML tag that you can use to provide image information.

Most browsers use this instead of the Alt text to display to the user when you put your mouse over an image.

According to many gurus like SEO Moz, it has no SEO impact.

But it is worth filling this in with a meaningful sentence of what the image is about.

The Description

The Description will appear on the Permalink page of the image in the Media Library. See FAQ on Worpdress

If your uploaded image is used in a Gallery, the Description is what will appear on the Attachment page.

So in my opinion, the description field is something you can forget about in most cases.

WordPress Image SEO

If you use WordPress like me, the following will show you how to fill in the above attributes for your images (alt and title).

Note: If you do not have access to your html or you use a webpage or lead page creator like Leadpages it will be more difficult to do these things. At least do the file name before you upload the image.

On the right you will see one of the two places you can fill in the Alt and Title fields in WordPress.

I have highlighted these fields in red, along with the image filename.

** Notice the image name has dashes between the words. If yours does not, re-upload it after changing the name. There is no way to do this inside WordPress.

So if you just want to display an image (without Caption) the fields I have filled in (inside the red boxes) are the two you need to take care of each time you use an image to SEO optimize images.

Note: I have noticed WordPress often ignores the title text you fill in when you upload the image. You need to edit the image inside you post and add it again for it to be added.

Other Image SEO Factors

Anchor text

This is the text that is used for displaying a link.

The same is true when you want to link to an image (because you can link directly to the image’s URL).

Linking to images is not done very often, however if you want to reuse an image or create backlinks for image SEO it is worth considering.

• The richer the link anchor text, the better the image will rank in search engines.
• It is also worth varying it for each link. (ie change the link text)

Sitemap

For those of you who manually create your sitemap xml, this is something to take into consideration

Search engines index your images, so make sure important images are included in your sitemap.

You will need to ensure special tags for the images are included in your main sitemap, or you can create a special image sitemap.

Here is Google’s answer on image sitemap if you need more help.

Page load speed & SEO Image Optimization

Page load speed, and image optimizations make a big difference to your site’s SEO.

Users and Google like pages that load fast.

If you are new to this idea, below is some previous posts that will help.

Learn about optimizing your images: Speed Up your website with simple Image Improvements

Find some tools to optimize your images: So you need some tools to work on those images

Finding free images: Spice up your Website with Free Images

Here’s What To Do Next…

If you want to improve your website’s SEO then I have a special treat for you.

It’s my step by step SEO Checklist to help you do your On Page SEO and optimize all your pages and posts.

This will help you rank higher in Google without any of that crazy link building or other SEO craziness.