Optimizing Images for Better Search Engine Rankings

 

Organizations, big and small, employ SEO or Search Engine Optimization to build brands over the Internet. They understand the importance of having an online presence. As a result, businesses end up investing thousands of dollars attempting to get the best positions on Google and other major search engines. In some cases, rankings equal revenue; hence determining the best ways to optimize SEO results tactically is essential to succeeding in the worldwide economy.

Images, as a plus point for search engine optimization and organic search results are often neglected. Images are capable of drawing traffic using image search, with inclusion in complete search results. There are numerous aspects to image optimization that includes better ranking in search results, optimization for trouble-free sharing of pictures on the social web, and in some cases optimization for consumer experience.

For image SEO, it might be useful to consider optimizing images, for example optimizing a small webpage within your page. Just like normal web pages, factors for optimizing images for search engines are url structure, expressive tagging and anchor text.

 Here are a few interesting tips for optimizing your images to perk up their performance in the search engine rankings: 

Look for the right images
Finding the appropriate image is extremely important. Good images can add a further dimension to a page or article that’ll encourage individuals to share the page and generate some great backlinks. According to research, although text is still the first thing perceived on the page, the image is what trades the page. Some of the best pages to find images are Flickr, stock.xchng and iStockPhoto. As long as you’re searching with the proper license, you may also make use of Google Images to find images for your website.

Add keywords in the file name
Just as keywords in post urls are indespensable for pages, the same is applicable for images. Using keywords in your image filename is essential for helping search engines find out relevancy. For instance, naming an image as 'istock_0003221Xsmall.jpg" won`t provide much information about the webpage. If there`s an article about blog themes, a relevant picture and a suitable file name should correspond to your article.

Google advises you to place your images in a single folder on your site, in stead of placing them in haphazard folders all through the website. One more suggestion from Google, linked to URLs of images, is to ensure that you use regular image file types like JPEG, PNG, GIF and BMP.

Build descriptive alt text
An added way that search engines help find out what your image is about is alt text or tags. Different from traditional web content, search engines fail to detect the text content of an image. Consequently, search engines have to depend on descriptions around the image, file names, alt text and other adjoining text.

If you add meaningful text in the alt tag, it’ll help the search engines in determining what the image is all about. If you’re using an image for a link to a different page, make sure that you use an alt text that’s relevant to the content of the site being linked to.

When all these things get lined up, it helps search engines substantiate that you aren’t spamming and that the image is of superior quality and relevant.