How do you optimise for image search?

Why Should You Optimise for Image Search?

Images are important to any website, impacting UX and site visibility, along with your ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Useful statistics you need to know:

• Thirty eight percent of Google SERPs display images, enabling users to see text and visual messages
• Images are critical in influencing visitors to make a purchase on ecommerce websites
• Image optimisation is important, as images can create both a positive and negative user experience 
• Large image files slow down the downloading process, as browsers need to download the image in order to display them. Large image files result in slow loading images and a poor user experience 
• Optimising your images for SEO ensures that search engines can read and find the files

How do you Optimise for Image Search?

There are a number of techniques you can use to optimise your images for SERPs:

Reduce Image Size

Image size is the dimensions of your image, such as 1920 x 1080 pixels, while file size is how much space is needed to store the file on the service, such as 300 kilobytes. If your images have a high resolution and high dimensions, they will take longer to download, slowing down the speed of your web page and giving users a poor user experience. Reducing the file size of the image is a good option for websites. Ensure that when you scale down the size of your image, you do not lose the quality.

Image File Names

File names affect your web page's SEO and ranking. In order to achieve image search success, you need to use relevant and descriptive keywords in your image file name. Some valuable image file name tips include:

• Use your targeted keyword at the beginning of the file name, separated by hyphens
• Never use underscores, as search engines do not recognise them
• Using hyphens helps the search engine focus on specific words
• The file name used must make sense to humans and search engines

Publish Unique Images

When you publish unique images, you improve your ranking in SERPs. If you choose stock images that are used on other sites, your image will not get the ranking it needs in image search results. 

Image Type

When it comes to SEO, digital marketers use website-friendly and commonly supported image formats. These include:

• JPEG – ideal for large photographs and illustrations
• PNG – preserve the background transparency in your images
• WebP – high quality with a small file size
• SVG – ideal for icons and logos

These formats support the image quality and file size, contributing to faster page loading times, which is an important SEO ranking factor.

Alt Text

Search engine crawlers need information about your image to understand the content, this is where Alt text comes in. Alt text, or alternative text, provides useful information, helping search engine crawlers index your image accurately.

Conclusion

When it comes to adding images to your website or blog, you should follow the above steps to ensure you optimise for image search. You can also use responsive images, that adapt to a screen size and resolution, which boosts user experience.  In order to appear in Google Image searches, ensure you only publish high quality images that are unique with the right image, size, file name, format, while using Alt text.