Image SEO: How Google Sees Your Images

Search Engines nowadays (and really since 2008) understand the importance of having images on a webpage. You need to make sure you’re doing images the right way because there is definitely a wrong way.

Here’s 4 tips for Image SEO:

1. Relevance Counts

Search Engines (see: Google, Bing) look at the file name of your image, so make it worth looking at! Is it attached to a blog? Then name it something relevant to your blog! This seems straightforward, but I’ll bet if you go check your website, most of you aren’t doing it!

2. Alt Text Matters!

Having descriptive Alt Text isn’t just courteous, it is beneficial! Alt text is how a screen reader views your image. Originally, screen readers were largely used to help the visually impaired navigate the web, now screen readers are used by a lot of people to consume the internet without looking at it. A great example of this would be people who use apps to read webpages to them while they are driving or running. Search engines also look at the alt text to help get a better understanding of the quality of your page, so make your alt text work for you! If you need help adding alt text to an image, drop me a comment and I’ll give you a nice tutorial with a bow and all.

3. Keep it short

Don’t fill it with a bunch of stuff. Google doesn’t like that. That is all.

4. Did we mention make it RELEVANT?!

Make sure your image is relevant and that a search engine would think so too. While this is clear, quite a lot of people have images on their pages that have nothing to do with what they wrote about. Get an image that is straightforward and obviously relevant. Unless you’re writing to an incredibly sophisticated audience (like I am), stick to something clearly related.

*Bonus Tip*

This isn’t related to SEO directly, but overall page quality. Crop your images to the actual size they need to be on the page. If they are too small, the web browser will stretch the image and it will look U-G-L-Y and if it is too large it will. take. forever. to. load. But like the Goldilocks, the third option of a properly sized image, fits just right. If you don’t know how to do this, use Photoshop or heck even Paint (See: Crop Tool).

Leave a comment below if you’ve got any questions!