Images have a big impact on how customers relate to the products and services your company offers. And let’s face it, images are attractive. Can you imagine visiting a website that only had text? It would be pretty boring, right? Images are a straightforward and fundamental part of SEO, but you should also remember to make them useful for search engines. Optimizing images are a simple and effective way for search engines to find out what images are about.
The first thing you need to know when it comes to optimizing images for search engines is something called an “alt” attribute. An alt attribute can help users who are using browsers that don’t support images, or is using other web software, such as screen readers. The content of the alt attribute provides information about the pictures on web pages. More importantly, search engine robots use the alt attribute to index, learn, and determine what your image is about.
Sometimes images are used as links. For instance, you might find images that are clickable, linking you to another page that may contain the same image or explain something in further detail. In these cases, alt attributes are treated similarly to the anchor text of a text link. It’s okay to use images as links in some cases, but we don’t recommend using them if text links can serve the same purpose. Lastly, optimizing your image filenames and alt text makes it easier for image search engines, like Google Images, to better understand your images.
You should store images files in specialized directories and manage them using common file formats. For instance, if you have images that are scattered around in multiple directories across your domain, you should consider using a single directory. Also, use commonly supported filetypes like JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP image formats. The extension of your filename should match the filetype.
Here are some best practices:
- Use brief but descriptive filenames and alt text.
- Alt text should be used with using images as links. In this case, search engines use alt attributes sort of like anchor text, making it extremely important.
- Use an image sitemap file that provides search engines with information about all of the images found on your site.