How To Optimise Images
Modern websites are much more interactive and contain multimedia content. One of the main things that we use in our websites, as well as blogs, are images.
When we are optimizing our website, we cannot ignore this crucial element. So, let’s talk about how we can optimise images for search engines.
When it comes to images, there are three main things we need to optimise. Those things are Alt Tags, Image Size, and Image Title. Let’s see why and how we can optimise each one of them. Let’s jump right into it.
1. Alternative Text (Alt Text)
Alternative or Alt text are the alternate descriptions of the images.
Their main purpose is accessibility. Sometimes, due to a slow internet connection, the images fail to load and in that case, only alt text is displayed on the web page. This gives an idea to the user what the image is about.
Search crawlers can only read the text and cannot understand any visual content. So, it is important to put alt text for images so that crawlers can understand the purpose as well as the contents of the image.
When you are using an image, you put alt text in the following way in HTML:
<img src=”https://image-source-url” alt = “alt-text-here”/>
If you are using some CMS like WordPress or Wix then they give image fields where you can put your alt texts.
What should you put in the alt text? Put whatever you see in the image. Remember the purpose of alt texts is to helo crawlers understand the contents of the image. Don’t use long alt texts. If there is a man wearing a black coat in the image, use alt text as “man with black coat”.
2. Image Size
Website speed is one of the main ranking signals and our website needs to be very fast. Due to heavy usage of the images, our website can become slow which is not a good user experience.
That’s why we reduce the size of the images, ideally lower than 100 KB.
Before you upload or use any image on the website, make sure it is of optimal size. If you are using CMS like WordPress or Wix, then you can use plugins that can help reduce the size of your images. One of the plugins that we use for image size reduction is Smush.
We won’t provide any link but you can search it in WordPress Plugins.
If you are not using any CMS, then you may need to reduce the size of the images manually using some online tools. You can search for those tools by typing image size reduction tools in Google or Bing.
3. Image Title
Image title is another image parameter that you need to optimise. You should always use descriptive image titles for your own accessibility. Also, remember to keep image titles short and don’t make them long.
Conclusion
You need to optimise these three parameters when you are using images on your website. However, you don’t have to compromise on the image quality. Also, avoid using images from Google search as not all images are free to use.
There are various online websites that give you free images without any copyright issues. Some of them which we use regularly are unsplash.com and freepik.
If you have an image that is mostly text then avoid using that image. You should always use text for your website content since search crawlers cannot read or understand the text in the images. Another thing that you might want to take care of is to use only relevant images inside your website.
If you use a good alt text and title then you have the chance to rank in Google Image Search where users can find your images and eventually land on your website.
In SEO, we have to find a lot of issues in the website such as missing alt texts or page titles etc that negatively impact our search performance. Looking for such issues manually can take a lot of time. So to track issues, resolve them and track performance, we use various SEO tools.
Next, we will learn about some of the popular SEO tools and learn how we can use them for our SEO work. Let’s move to the next chapter.
Search Engine Code Team is comprised of SEO experts and strategists having more than 20 years of combined experience. We keep testing and delivering knowledge of SEO for the community of SEO.
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