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!
The following two tabs change content below.
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
Latest posts by Ann Smarty (see all)
- Digital Marketing Tools: Best New SEO Software I Use - Apr 5, 2022
- Five Tools to Find a Great Brand Name - Mar 4, 2022
- How Much Does a Blog Site Cost? The Minimum Blog Price - Nov 26, 2021
Great to see a list that talks about more than just images for SEO but rather to satisfy everyone who is looking at them.
I find generateanchors.com very useful to generate a huge list
of natural anchor texts. It mixes everything pretty well.
I have implemented this same technique for SEO and it has helped me greatly. Thanks
I was surprised to see that men are more likely to first look at faces. I came here looking for a good tool to identify missing alt tags – any suggestions?
Hello Ann Smarty,
Is a good ideea to begin a post with an image? WordPress SEO plugin don’t agree this thing and return the error “The keyword doesn’t appear in the first paragraph of the copy” because in the first paragraph Yoast see a image code not the article text. I supose that WP SEO want to make a useful suggestion… I’m wrong?
Thank you
Perfect tips to optimise SEO.
But i want to ask one thing. Pinterest or Google images?
@Anchit Both? 🙂
Very good posting I really appreciate.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.
Very nice post. I appreciate the succinctness and
clarity of detail. Thanks for the great info.
Great reading. Thanks for writing a hug
Great post. Wish I’d have read this about 2 months ago, as I struggled with advice, useless tools, and spent valuable time searching for the info you’ve so concisely provided in this highly informative article.
THANK YOU!
thnkyou for the help.. i really appreciate your work.. and now i will keep in mind the information u provided keep post stuff like this…
Hey Ann
Thanks for sharing these little nuggets!
this is what i want to make my blog more seo friendly with search engine, thanks for sharing, keep sharing useful things
Thank you for the great information. Is there anything to bulk optimize the images? I have too many to do one at a time.
Awesome Ann! Just what I needed to prepare the images for my site!
Thanks for the tips! I’m probably not going to go back and change ALL my pictures, but all new pictures will be added with alt text.
I use joomla, how do optimize images on page.
Our images are quite large, but we try to keep it high quality. Thanks for the tips.
thanks for valuable tips, Ann!
You wrote everything in good way and I do agree with your post and Image optimization is huge part of SEO.
how do I know the alt text is missing???
sorry my bad english.
I’m confused how to change image alt.
Because at the time of posting, all the pictures I’ve added alt image.
But when in check with seo quacke, all image no alt image.
Please help, thank you.
Regard,
Sany Trisandi
Hi! First of all thank your for sharing
I like very much the tips of the article about how to optimize the web images for improving our SEO
Now I usually use the SEO Friendly Images WP Plugin to “alt” of my forgotten images
Mª Jesús
Just checked back to see the name of the optimization plugin 🙂 We try to keep the images in good quality, but it does slow down the site.
Images are mandatory for a website, since they help in better user experience. Like the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Same goes with the images on a website. They make the content more interesting.
Pretty well known strategy, but yes it is advisable to remember some knowledge.
I personally treat SEO just like an addition to internet business. PPC I guess is much more efficient if you consider factors lite time and results.
All in all it is fine to work on your SEO by any means
Few more ideas from me:
* try hotlinking the images, or even copying to another site (don’t change filename or edit it or md5sum will change)
* place within same block level HTML elements as keywords
* use the word “photo” in the alt text
Thank you for this insightful post. I have been looking for ways to optimize my images. I hope these ideas are still relevant. I love your tips!
im confuse, i’ve using ALT tag for all images in my blog, but seoquake always said that there 25 images without alt tag. help me please :'(
Thanks for this useful information.
I’ve added alt to the pictures in my web
But with seo quacke, no alt. Why?
I did not know that a picture can be optimized for search engines.
thanks
Your article helpful me a lot,Thank you so much
Thank you for the great information. Is there anything to bulk optimize the images? I have too many to do one at a time.
how do I know the title text is missing???
Ill be sure to use some of these tips for my website.
Very useful post, what should be the ideal size of an image? I mean size in kilobytes.
Nice Article, Your article is very helpful for me. Thanks for the article.
How do I optimise images properly? I do a 3 step process to bring it to lowest size but still, the page speed of my blog is relatively slow.
1. Compress using Image Optimiser online tool
2. Run it through ImageOptim Mac app
3. Run it through image compressor WordPress plugin.
My articles are usually 2000 words long and I tend to add more the 5 images per post.
It takes close to 2 seconds to load an article. Any tips on that front?
Thank you for the great information to optimize the images
thanks for Sharing Very Useful Information ..
I think optimizing images for the speed is very important
I have been struggling with the best practices of images on my website. I appreciate the info. The lists of stock images was helpful also. Thanks again.
Useful tips, it would be greatly helpful during advertising in social media. Thanks for sharing
I just started optimizing my site with images on my work at home website. I really appreciate your tips on how to properly optimize images for better rankings.
Hey Ann ,
Great article !! Thanks a ton 🙂
hi very good article I’m already using some of the plugins I need to know which plugins to share you I’m interested in the social networks that appears at the end of your post.