How to Best Utilize Your Website Pictures for SEO
One huge missed opportunity that I often see in small business websites is optimizing images for SEO. You may not even know this is a possibility, but it’s one of the first ways I jumped to the top of Google search results, so it’s not one you want to skip over! There are a couple of adjustments to make before uploading any pictures to your website, but once it’s done, you’ll never have to re-do any of the steps.
So how can you make the most of your website images to enhance Search Engine Optimization? Here are the two key changes to make:
1) Rename your images.
Any picture you take, whether on a camera or phone, is given a filename. Oftentimes it’s something like ‘DSC_123’ and while there’s nothing wrong with that per se, it won’t help your Google rankings at all! Most people might upload one or two images to a blog post, and other pictures in various places around the general website. Each one of these should be given a name that is both relevant to the image and keyword-targeted.
For example, the graphic at the top of this image is one I created in Canva. Before uploading it, I renamed it ‘how-to-optimize-images-for-seo.’ This filename is certainly relevant to the image itself as well as the content of my blog, and it’s a good keyword-laden phrase that many business owners in my target demographic will likely use in search. It’s as simple as that!
One word of caution: search engines are pretty smart when it comes to reading what images actually contain now (if you don’t believe me, check the Facebook alt text of your latest pictures), so don’t give a random name to a picture just to stuff in more keywords. Keep the words you use relevant to the image first, and your business second - and hopefully, you can do both at the same time!
2) Resize your images.
In my experience, most website images are just too darn big. This causes lags in the server, a slow page speed, and as a result your Google ranking could actually fall. It’s pretty simple to resize your images, and it’s definitely not necessary to upload the highest resolution possible! While there are varying opinions over what size an image should be, my general rule of thumb is 1500 pixels on the long edge, with 72dpi.
If you don’t have a resizing tool that’s readily available, here are two websites that make it easy (and free!) to resize your images:
PicResize | Adobe Image Resizer
Believe it or not, that’s it! While it may seem a little daunting at first to resize and rename all of your pictures, once it becomes a part of your workflow it’ll become second nature. Besides, putting in a little work now will allow you to reap huge SEO rewards down the road!