Images play an important role in the structure of a website. The images are the first components that attract attention, when visiting a website. Depending on the way you include images on a website, will determine on how it is treated by the search engines. Relevant content is essential for rank. Calesence Digital specialists can develop a fully customized SEO strategy for a client based on a website audit. This way your business will be seen by the people who are searching for it.
You should consider the following steps to optimize the images on your site:
1. Check Image license
Before you begin the process by which you make images more appealing to search engines, you should have to have a little time to check if you have proper licenses for images that you want to use them.
Do not simply copy an image that you find on the internet, verify where it comes and if you have the right to use it. If you aren’t doing this, some day you can wake up with an email in which you are asked to remove the picture from the site because another person owns the rights to that picture. You do not want such events that disrupt your business. On the other hand, effective ranking service will optimize your business.
Instead you use open source images from sources like pixabay, openphoto, or can buy images from websites that offer images. This way so you won’t have to worry about the problems caused by unlicensed images. Fore more information where to find free images online read searchenginejournal post.
2. Use sharp Images
Nothing is more unpleasant when you visit a site than an unclear image or you can see the pixels because it was not resized properly. Any well-built website should contain only high-quality images to attract.
3. Re-size your Images
After you find the right images, take some time to re-size them to the size at which will be posted on your site.
Why?
To reduce the loading time of your website. Loading time of a page is important for both visitors and for SEO performances. Sites with big pictures use more resources, because loads heavier than websites that have pictures optimized for size of site.
To re-size your images you can use programs such as Photoshop, Gimp or online services like picresize.
4. Compress your Images
After you re-size the images, the next step would be to compress them.
Both image size and the amount of information it contains, determine the resources needed to load. After compressing the site it will load much faster.
5. Name your Images
After the previous optimization steps, the time has come to add targeted keywords for search engine optimization (SEO) by giving a name to your image.
For example if you have a website where you sell beach products, when you upload your image don’t use original name (IMG2337. jpg), replaces that name with what it pictured (ex. sunglasses . jpg, umbrella. jpg, etc.). When you name your images, search engines will understand more easily what that picture is all about and it will be beneficial for SEO.
6. Add TITLE tags and ALT to your Images
In addition to optimizing the pictures names in section above, you can integrate the TITLE and ALT tags, but please keep in mind that their purpose is to assist search engines and visitors. They must contain words that describe or represent the content of the uploaded picture. If the pictures posted do not load for various reasons will display the ALT tag description.
Although it is important to optimize your images should not exaggerate with the addition of too many words that are repeated because it can draw penalties from search engines. Things should be done naturally in order not to detect traces of optimization.
Tool for optimizing Images
Smush.it is a free service from Yahoo that removes unnecessary bytes from image files, without having to change their appearance and their quality.