The article was updated April 2017. Please post comments to add up-to-date tips and tools
Optimize your images for search engines:
- Use keywords in alt text, text around the image, file name, page title;
- Set up separate search-engine-accessible image folder;
- Use reasonable image file size (here are wordpress plugins to optimize images).
- Limit number of images per page;
- Use popular and reliable photo sharing hosting (e.g. Flickr is reported to help in Yahoo! image optimization).
Optimize your images for social media:
- (Obvious) use really great images to give your readers another reason to spread the word;
- Use social media image resizer to create images of perfect dimensions for each social media network
- Create animated GIFs: They go hot easily!
Optimize your images for people:
- People pay more attention to a clear image where they can see details (choose high quality images).
- (Clean, clear) faces in an image get more eye fixation. (don’t use abstract images too often).
- Keep them relevant: images are not the first thing a visitor sees on a web page but they can compel him to stay (according to the eye-tracking research web text is prior to images; when looking at a printed article people see images first; with web page they see text first – nevertheless images make the visitor stay and remember the page via relevant associations).
Gender specific:
- Women are better at recognizing facial emotions than men (research):
- Men seem to be more likely than women to first look at faces rather than other parts of a nude body (source);
- Women are more interested in images with more than one person.
Tools and fun for image optimization:
- SEO Friendly Images WP Plugin – automatically optimize image ALT and TITLE with the help of post “title” variable;
- Again, this article lists more tools
How to find images online.
- Smart Photo Stock is a great resource
- A Guide to Finding and Using Incredible Flickr Images – describing (1) which Flickr images you are allowed to use; (2) tactics to quickly find best images.
- You can also use Instasize to edit those photos for free
Image stats:
Let’s make a stronger case here:
- According to WME Group – SEO, content with photos generate 53 percent more engagement than text-only based content and draws over 100 percent more comments
- According to Backlinko, content with at least one image significantly outperformed content without any images. Although it’s probably correlation, not the causation phenomenon
Any tips and tools to add to this clutter-free checklist? Please add them in the comments!
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I am the owner of this blog as well as Brand and Community Manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas and Founder of MyBlogGuest, MyBlogU and ViralContentBee.com
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Just discovered your blog while landing on your guest blogger tool.
Thank you for sharing and keep up the good work!
Great info, thanks
Thanks for the idea!
Thank you very much for such a great suggestion.
Really nice article on many of the different ways to use, manipulate and display images.
Lots of people know the importance of there use in post and on site, but you do show some of the finer tweaks.
Nice job…
Wow, actually I know how to optimize a site but here i got some new thing How To Optimize Images For Search Engines.
I was searching on the keyword Seo image optimization and your article on the Google first page..was really helpful and worth reading…
I will follow this techniques to my project. thanks dude.
very informative and concrete post Ann
thank you so much, i want robots.txt file for images.
very nice info thanks for sharing….
Really good stuff, thank you!
one fifth of my traffic comes from images that are showing up prominently in google’s image search
It is also good to link an existing image on the webpage to another. Sometimes You can upload an avatar directly from another server. This can also help to make your images more visible
“Keywords in alt text, text around the image, image name, page title”
“Around the image?” I don’t know what that means. Perhaps this could be a little more clearly written.
Image optimization is a important part of SEO. It should be handled properly. Thanks for sharing nice information.
It is also true that not too many people can be found who are not interested about the latest fashion products in the market today and they want the best yves saint laurent pumps products in the market.Christian Louboutin Short Boots
Nice job, I will try, thanks
Hi,
Very nice information about Image Optimization.
Thanks,
Katerina.
I want to do image optimization for my website. Got through your website but i could not find out the (Enabled image search option at Google webmaster tool.)as you have mentioned.
Thanks for this information about Image Optimization. I enjoy reading your blog 😉
Really good stuff, thank you!
I was searching for image seo using keywords and this is a good article. Thanks for sharing good informaion.
I’m struggling figuring out how to enable image search in Google Webmaster? Was this a prior setting that had to be turned on and now is automatic?
Thank you for the great information. Is there anything to bulk optimize the images? I have too many to do one at a time.
Display a small, highly compressed version of a picture on your page. Link that small picture to a larger high-quality image.
Perfect timing. I am about to go through all my early posts and needed to know if the images will do or not.
Now i know that I must change them for 2 reasons.
1. They are not very good – beginners mistakes
2. SEO purposes
This may take some time….
Great post. Thank you.
Andy Moore
I really appreciate the article. I have the SEO Quake for Firefox toolbar and it let me know how many images I had that didn’t have proper alt. descriptions.
I am still struggling because when you copy the html code for a banner ad for example, usually the do not have the proper alt text included.
For someone like me that has taught myself everything up until now it is really a challenge.
Thanks again for your great information.
David
Thanks a lot for this post. I never valued image naming in my site but now I will do it. Thanx
I would be curious to hear your opinion about how optimizing the images via properties would positively or negatively or neutral effects on a local optimization effort. Thanks in advance.
Make it a great day.
Thad
Thanks ann, i was searching for image optimization and got your article on top but you have not spoken about link building of Image URL, why? will it not help?
Reasonable image file size, i love that.. what’s the best image file size optimizer around? Can anyone suggest?
Nice information! I never know that re-uploading image can also help! But it really make sense because it is like a fresh content that will index by a bot.
Images and more recently infographics are becoming more important for building page ranking. The tips you mentioned certainly help in getting your site rank higher.
Thanks for the tips! There is definitely something to be said about optimizing your images to aid your overall SEO!
Have a great day!
David
I am sorry beginners. other than wp and stock photo, is there another way to make the description of the image through php script editing. this resource in order to minimize the server computer, thank you ..
Hi Ann,
I totaly agree with you about “ALT” and “TITLE” attribut for a better ranking.
But, I would like to know if renaming a pic “image.jpg” (and all pics of a website) like this “name-of-the-ste-image.jpg” could be useful for SEO and ranking ?
Regards !
Daniel
Hello Ann,
Thanks for reminding me about the importance of adding “ALT” and “TITLE” attribute to my images for a better ranking for my blog.
Thanks for a very informative post Ann… You’ve given me ideas on how to optimize the images on my site. I’m a newbie and I really need post like this. Thanks and Keep posting!
I appreciate this article is a little dated now, although most of the information is still very relevant. What I would add is that Google now allows you to create image XML Sitemaps (http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=178636) which enables you to inform Google about specific image attributes and information. Similarly associations such as the IPTC are working on creating new standards to inform search engines of the embedded meta information in images.
Also Daniel, In answer to your question yes it does help. It gives the image more meaning so search engines can better understand the nature of the image. It can therefore be better associated with search queries. See Google’s article (http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=114016).
Until recently, I never realized the importance of images to Google or the other search engines. I have now put the keyword in for every image I use on a post or page.
I wonder though can you over use the keywords on an image? In WP, for instance, there are 3 places you can put descriptions. Is it wise to put this in all 3 places, I wonder?
Thanks for this.
Andy Moore
Really good stuff Ann
Thanks for this information about Image Optimization. I enjoy reading your blog 😉
Oh my god! These are exclusive tips for webmasters. Thank you very much for these ideas..
The best thing about pasting an image in your website or blog is that it will attract the attention of the reader. The image can sometimes give a better understanding pertaining to the topic that you write. Plus if you are writing about a dry topic, you could spice up the blog by adding funny pictures.
I do apply some of the tips you shared in optimizing images for SEs but most of the time i used .png in the images of my blog. Now that I know that .jpg is better than the image format i used to integrate in my blog, I will do it.
I have put up alt attribute and text in picture, but why if check my web likes in woorank, alt attribute are empty or missing ?
thanks
Thanks for this wonderful information man. I was struggling to edit my images, cuz they was most without any ALT tags. I am using now SEOquake plugin for mozilla and its detects that everything is working fine now!
Regards
well written tips on image optimization. I don’t know properly what is alt attribute and text in picture. i now know in details
Thanks for this article, now i know function of img ALT, to support my seo in my website…great thanks for you,,