Do Images Boost SEO
SEO for images is just as relevant as SEO in the text and technical fields. Images play a big role in organic findability and support your content. In this article, I’ll explain why your image SEO is more important than ever in 2024!
Why is SEO for images important?
Failure to load an image
It happens that the page in question crashes or that the image does not work. This can be due to a file that is too large or slow internet. To replace the image, the visitor should be able to read what kind of image is normally displayed here.
Blind/visually impaired people
Blind/visually impaired people who use the internet must also be accompanied by a text with the image. For those who use a braille device, the image is read aloud.
Helpful content
With the introduction of Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines, it’s more important than ever to create unique and distinctive helpful content, including images. These guidelines emphasize the value of content that demonstrates true expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. This also affects the use and choice of images on your website.
Google images
Of course, the Google Images is an unforgettable part of why optimizing images is so important. When someone is specifically looking for an image, such as ‘the playground of Camping Among Us’, your images should be optimized for this. After all, it’s your playground that this person is specifically looking for.
In addition, with the findability via the image index, you also have a better chance that new visitors will find your website, especially if you use relevant terms!
Google Bot
The Google Bot uses 2 pieces of data from images: the image URL during crawling and the Alt text during indexing. The images on your page support your content. To make it clear to the GoogleBot what the purpose of the image is and in what form it connects to your page, you need to make sure you have the right image URL and a good Alt text. I’ll explain what this means in more detail below.
7 Best Practices
Use descriptive file names
Name images with clear and descriptive file names that are relevant to “Circle-to-Search”. Avoid generic names such as “image1.jpg”. Instead, use names that represent the content of the image, such as “circle-to-search-feature.jpg”.
To optimize ALT to texts
Provide each image with accurate and descriptive alt text. Not only does this improve SEO, but it also makes your content accessible to users with visual impairments. For example, a good alt text for an image related to “Circle-to-Search” could be: “Demonstration of Circle-to-Search on an Android smartphone”.
Image size and load times
Optimize the size of the images to reduce page load times without sacrificing quality. Faster loading times improve the user experience and are rewarded by search engines with better rankings.
Use of responsive images
Make sure images display properly on different devices and screen sizes. This can be done using responsive image techniques such as the ‘srcset’ attribute in HTML.
Contextual and relevant placement
Place images within the content in a logical and contextually relevant way. This helps search engines better understand the relevance of the image.
Use of image sitemaps
Consider using image sitemaps to help search engines find and index all the images on your site, especially if they’re loaded in a way (like lazy loading) that can make it difficult for search engines to detect them.
SEO-Friendly URL structure
Make sure that the URLs of the pages where the images are located are SEO-friendly and descriptive. This helps search engines better understand the context of the image.