How to Optimize Images for Search Engine Optimization
Images are an important part of almost every website. Whether it is displaying a photo of a product, sharing photos of your team, or even featuring a full gallery of your completed services, images create visual appeal and provide information to your visitors. Most Search Engines even feature an entire section of their service just to images; just try an image search on any of them!
With that being said, there are a number of ways you can help your website gain exposure on search engines through image optimization. Here are a few tips to help get you started!
File Naming
While the file name is not generally important, many content management systems (including SIMS CMS) use the file name to generate automated alternative descriptions. Alternative descriptions describe images to users utilizing screen readers, and are also used by search engines to better understand what your image is of. Many default file names are vague such as img_001, which aren't very descriptive.
Just imagine an alternative description for a photo of a fox being “image_100,” well, it's less likely to be served up as a response for someone searching for fox photos. A better file name might be “red-fox-kit_in-field.” Not only would it make adding alternative descriptions easier, it also helps with organization of images, and can save a ton of time when optimizing for large collections of images, like when adding a gallery to your website.
Alternative Descriptions
Alternative (alt) descriptions are a tag included in the line of HTML code that calls your image to be displayed on your website. While not seen by your website's visitors, it will be read out if your visitor is using a screen reader, and it will also be read by search bots while indexing your website.
Many content management systems have an interface that lets you define your alternative descriptions before inserting an image, or afterwards if you are modifying it. A default alt description of “image” or “(file name)” is usually set in place, however its often not descriptive enough, especially if you have default file names like “image_01”. You can better optimize your image by updating the description to properly describe your graphic. This is a good place to include target keywords if it works naturally. Note that the recommended length is no more than 125 characters, so it is best to try to keep it short and to the point!
Title Tags
Title tags are similar to alternative descriptions, except they are usually shorter (recommended max length is 50-60 characters). They'll also show up visually when a user's cursor hovers over an image on a page. While the title tag is optional, it is a great additional space to optimize your image with keywords.
Text Descriptions
In cases where you are using text-heavy images to share important information such as; infographics, posters, image copies of documents, it is important to also include a text description of the information so that its content can still be understood by users utilizing screen readers and search bots crawling your site. This means typing out those dates, statistics and letterheads. While it takes a little extra effort, it's worth it to make your content more accessible to both your website visitors and search engines for better indexing!
Conclusion
To conclude, these are a few ways to optimize images on your website and work towards better indexing and higher ranking search results. Have questions? We're happy to discuss further.
Tel: (807) 768.6603
Fax: (807) 768.2218
Toll-Free: 1 (888) 817.3707
Email: info@sencia.ca