How can images impact on-site optimization?
Image optimization is a critical part of any SEO strategy. It can help improve your site’s rankings, boost traffic, and increase customer satisfaction.
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The best images are unique and relevant to your page’s content.
Google ranks high-quality, original images more highly than poor-quality, stock-photo-like images on your website.
Optimizing your images is a key SEO strategy for every business that uses photographs on its website. The more original, high-quality images you have, the more likely your photos will be shown in result thumbnails and receive clicks from visitors.
File size matters:
The larger your image file is, the more data it takes for the browser to load it onto a web page and display it in the correct dimensions. This can significantly slow down the loading time of a page, so it’s important to ensure that your images are not too large.
Resizing your images to their actual display size is another important step in optimizing images for SEO. This can reduce the number of bytes a page has to download, which can improve site speed and SEO.
Use a descriptive file name:
The file name of your images is one of the most important optimization factors. Using keywords in your file name can help search engines identify your photos and rank them higher.
Make sure to use hyphens in your file names as well, as these help search engines emphasize words more.
Always use your target keyword in the file name and preferably at the beginning of the name, separated by hyphens.
Avoid underscores as these are not recognized by search engines and will make your files harder to find.
Scale your images to their actual display size (image width and height): This is a crucial area of image optimization that many businesses overlook. Serving images that are wider than the user’s screen size will not only slow down your page but also negatively affect its SEO.
Take a few seconds before you upload an image to your CMS to ensure it is not too large. This will allow you to resize it to the exact size that you want it on your page, without losing any visual quality.
Test your site’s image file sizes with different types of devices and screen sizes to ensure that they don’t look blurry or small on any device.
Compress your images: By compressing the size of your images, you can drastically reduce their file size and save space on your server. This can significantly impact the load time of your page and lead to a better user experience.
Add alt text to your images:
Alt text is a text alternative for images that cannot be properly displayed by a browser. It tells a user what an image depicts, which is useful for people who have visual impairments. It’s also an important component of on-site SEO since it helps Google understand what your images are about and can contribute to your site’s accessibility for users.
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