How to Optimize Images for SEO?

You’re probably thinking that you’ve already optimized the pages of your website, why would you want to go back in and optimize images as well. For one thing, page ranking. If you’ve already performed some type of SEO optimization on your website, you are aware of the benefits of SEO, but what you may not be aware of are the benefits associated with optimizing images. Search engines are generally only aware that there is an image present on your page; they do not know what the image is or how it can be relevant to someone performing a search. By optimizing that image to be SEO friendly you are providing search engines with the information they need to know what the image is.

Alt-attribute is a great method to share with search engines what the images on your web pages are. The alt-attribute will clearly define alternate text to display should the image not be properly displayed. This will not only be helpful to users who have trouble loading the image, but to search engines as well. This information will provide search engines with information about what the image is that you are using. This is why it is extremely important for web designers to include keywords when writing the alt-descriptions that are associated with images on your website.

If you want to take the process a step further, you may want to change the file name of the images that are located on your site. Instead of basic names, you may want to enhance them by using a descriptive name which will be recognized by search engines. If you choose to use the name that is associated with a regular image, you will get something similar to “image000.1”; this does nothing for search engines. To make it more appealing in SEO, you should change the name to something that describes the image. To further help these file names achieve the desired result, you should also remember to include hyphens in all of the titles. This will make them easily recognizable by search engines.

By making these two simple changes to the images that you use on your website, you will be a step ahead of many other websites online today. Remember to keep your file names as descriptive as possible. Paying close attention to alt-attribute and the file name of your image will help you achieve your desired SEO goals.