You all should know the importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in your business being a Blogger, Affiliate Marketer, or doing any type of job related to internet.

You will never be able to see your links on Google’s First page without doing proper SEO. Both on-page and off-page seo techniques are responsible if you want to get your link on the top of google.

Many bloggers make sure that their blog content is fully search engine optimized but don’t pay any attention in optimizing the images they use in their content.

Image Search Engine Optimization is considered as one of the biggest factor in website ranking. These days you might have seen that people search for the popular images and no doubt if you able to optimize your blog images properly you will get a lot of traffic on your blog.


Here we’ll going to focus completely on Image optimization techniques.


Why Do you Need to Optimize Images ?

Properly optimized images can help you in improving the SEO score, help you in making your article more search engine friendly and not only this but it will gradually help you to load your blog page much faster.

Benefits of Image SEO

1. You can easily drive a huge amount of traffic through Photo Sharing sites Like Pinterest, Instagram etc.

2. You can easily rank high in the image search section, As the competition is much more less compared to other sections.

3. Increase the SEO score of your content and helps you to improve your blog bounce rate.

4. If you start using custom images, then you can get backlinks for your blog. In case any
other blog uses your images then they will mention source/credit link in their article.

How to find Right Images ?

We all prefer using images in our blog posts and before getting started with the image optimization tricks, I wanted to share some resources which will help you in getting stock images without even paying for them.

You need to be careful while looking for images. Avoid using Google Images because those images might be copyright protected and can put you in some trouble for using those images.


Finding Right Images
Finding Right Images 

Instead of that, you can use various website resources which are there to provide you stock images free of costs. You can search for the images which perfectly suits to your blog posts. Websites like FreeDigitalPhotos, Pixabay, MorgueFile, etc can provide you stock images for free. But in case you are not satisfied with the images the you can go for ShutterStock where you pay few bucks and can find good images with high quality.

You can use both free and paid website resources for finding out images for your blog content. Always avoid using Google Images in your articles.

It will be the best option if you can design custom images for your blog content. In that way no one will bother you and you have all the rights to the images because you made them yourself.

How Can You Create Your Own Images ?

It happens most of the time that you find good images but not suits your content properly. In such case you can create custom images for your blog content. Websites like Canva can be very helpful in creating custom images for your articles.

Create Your Own Images
Canva : Create your own image

Canva is one of the most popular and best custom image creating platform. If you don’t have any idea of creating custom images by yourself then you can use Canva. This site offers you some pre-made templates and really amazing fonts which can be used in creating images. Because of the simple drag and drop feature in this website you need not to have any special techniques. Creating images of any size and dimension is extremely easy with the help of Canva.

PicMonkey
PicMonkey

If you are not satisfied with Canva, then you can also try using PicMonkey. Another great website which helps you in designing your custom images. Not only templates or tools, You can have some custom designs for using them in your image.

How to optimize Images for SEO ?

1. Putting Right File Name

Before Uploading any new image on your blog, you should check your file image properly. I have personally observed many newbie bloggers who keeps on uploading images without even bothering about the file names.

You should rename every image file before uploading them on your blog. Try to give name that you want to rank for. By giving a keyword rich name to your file, you will make it really simple for search engines to get higher in their results.

Have doubts ? Here’s an example :-

Suppose you are writing an article on most profitable niche to start blogging, name you image as “profitable-niche-to-start-blogging” or similar names.

This will help to increase your blog ranking and will also make sense to both your readers and search engines as well.

There’s a format for naming file names. Make sure that you use dashes in between two words. Here’s a format which you should follow.
  • Wrong Format : “profitablenichetostartblogging123.png” 
  • Okay Format : “profitablenichetostartblogging.png” 
  • Correct Format : “profitable-niche-to-start-blogging.png”

2. Compressing Images

Next thing which you should take care of your blog images size and the dimensions. Always avoid using large dimension images in your blog posts. This will affect the servers and your page will take too much loading time.

Page Loading time is very important factor from SEO point of view. By putting small size images with less dimension you can increase your website speed.

Image Size and Dimensions

I think that the size of image should be minimum 200 x 200 px so that social networking sites like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest etc. can easily use them.

You can even insert a smaller or much larger images depending on your requirements. I have mentioned the above dimensions as those are the minimum requirements for an image to be picked up by social networking sites.

But in case if you are dealing with large images then make sure to consider your blog content area width. To create a perfect image for your blog posts make sure you know your blog content area width properly. Many blog templates have a content area width of 600 x 700 px.

But what if you have downloaded a stock image and it’s too large to fit in your blog post ?

If you have downloaded a stock image with large dimensions then it’s better to resize it according to your blog content area width and then upload it on your blog post. Don’t ever upload the original size images in your blog post.

Your blog content area width
Content Area Width

If you have already uploaded the original image and then resizing it from the posts then that’s not a good idea. When your blog post will be loaded in your web browser, your blog post images will firstly load to it’s original size and then afterwards get resized. This will do nothing expect increasing your blog page loading time.

Online tools such as PicResize and PicMonkey are considered to be the best where you can resize your images before uploading them in your blog posts.

Image Compression

When you directly use the original stock images in your posts then you will be putting a lot of pressure on your servers for simply loading those images. You should know that the higher the image quality, more the size will be.

If you upload images which has 3 digits in Kb or is in MB then it’s quality is too high.

It might be possible that those images have dimensions around 500 x 500px or even large. In such cases try to simply resize them and compress for less size.

If you don’t know how to compress images then no worries. There are some online tools available such as TinyPNG which helps you in compressing image dimensions to reduce the size. With the help of this amazing online image compression tool, your image quality will not be much affected even after compressing the images. The images will not get pixelated and still looks good.

Image Compression : Tiny PNG
Image Compression

What if I Don’t What to Compress Images ?

If you are having any photo sharing blog, Hd wallpapers blog, or don’t want to compromise with the image quality then you can upload original images on Dropbox or other similar websites. You can then upload the resized/compressed images in your article and then link them to the cloud services for downloading the original images. In this way you don’t have to compromise with the image quality and your page loading speed will also not get affected much.

3. Alt Text

It’s main purpose is to provide image description to search engines. If by chance blog image is not shown on the google then Alt text will be shown in it’s place and will give the description of your blog content.

Not only this but Alt text also helps in informing search engines that an image is there. You should know that search engines can’t read your images and if you are not using any alt text in your images then you are surely missing a golden opportunity for your blog.

Whenever you search for any query in google Images then Alt text is the main factor which is responsible for showing up all the images related to that particular query. Many bloggers tries to acquire the top google search engine ranking but they forgot that images search can also drive a huge traffic towards their blog.

So, by adding proper Alt text in the images you can make sure that your blog article is fully seo optimized.

How to Choose Perfect Alt Texts for your Images ?

Now you are aware about the importance and the benefits of Alt text, but how to choose perfect Alt text for your images ?

One of the best place to enter keywords and secure your high position in google image searches is Alt text. However, you should make sure that your posts images suits your Alt texts. Never add a hand image and text it as “Best image optimization for free”. This won’t be making any kind of sense and you will get ignored by many users.

So, by picking up proper images and adding meaningful Alt text to your images you will easily make it visible to search engines and can increase your website rank in search results.

How can you add Alt Texts in Images ?

For adding Alt Text in images simply add alt=”your alt text”. Not clear ? Here’s how.

<img src=”Most-profitable-niche-to-start-blogging” alt=”profitable niche to start blogging”/>

If you are a Google Blogger or Wordpress user there is a simple method for adding alt text would be uploading media through post editor. You will be directly able to edit your images Alt Text when you upload them through post editor. Check out the below example.

Add Alt Texts in Images
Adding Alt Text 

So, Always make sure to add meaningful Alt text to your blog images that describes your content effectively. This is one of the best way by which you can easily drive high amount of readers on your blog.

Basic Rules for Image Optimization

1. Image Dimensions

Image Dimensions are the most important factor in image optimization. Whenever you insert any image in your blog posts, make sure to mention it’s dimensions in it’s HTML code.

Image parameters should be entered in the code as it play a huge role in your page loading time. Your web browser will detect the dimensions of image and will keep the space defined and to be filled with the image.

Your web browser will simultaneously load the text and images, and gradually help in maintaining the page loading speed as well. If you avoid mentioning the width and height tags then your page will be loaded tell the image and then image will be loaded, then the remaining text will be loaded. In all your page loading speed will be increased putting a lot of strain of the servers.

In Google Blogger or Wordpress these parameters are automatically added whenever you upload any images on your blog posts but if you work manually then you make sure to add tags. Here’s an example to add the parameters.

2. Removing Hyperlinks

Whenever you add any images on your blog Blogger/Wordpress automatically adds an image location link in the source code.

I can’t think any other reason for keeping the hyperlinks on the images except for sharing the full size images.

Removing Hyperlinks
Removing Hyperlinks

Your blog readers can get easily distracted with the image hyperlinks. When your reader is carefully going through your article and opens your image, they will get redirected to the image location and hence result in losing interest in the article.

So, Removing hyperlinks from the images is a good thought. Here’s how can you remove it quickly.

When you upload any image, you will see an option says Links. Click on it and select None to remove the hyperlinks. Simple as that.

Best Tips for Optimizing Images

1. Be Careful with the Image Format

Various formats are available for images such as JPEG (JPG), PNG, GIF etc. Most of the blogger prefer using JPG format and sometimes go with GIF & PNG image formats too.

1. JPEG format : It is one of the most popular and best format which is used for digital photography purpose.

2. PNG format : You can easily compress your images size using this format. It will not going to affect the quality of the images even after making multiple copies or resize it.

3. GIF format : If you want to upload small size images then this image format will be good choice

Among all the above formats, JPEG is the best format which you should go with. The reason is quite simple for selecting this format. JPEG format is comparatively smaller in size which will help you in loading image faster in your blog posts.

2. Using Captions for the Images

Text description shown right below the images in your blog posts are called as Captions. This can be used for describing the image or giving a source/credit links.

Although there are no direct connection between search engine results and image captions. But there are some reasons why you should add caption to your blog images.

Captions for the Images
Using Image Captions

With the help of image captions you can tell your blog readers that what the image is all about. It happens that reader might get any wrong idea and jump into the wrong conclusion. But by adding captions you make sure what are you trying to tell your readers before they jump to any conclusion by themselves.

Another benefit of using Image Captions is developing interest among your readers. By using meaningful and attractive captions you can develop interest among your readers which force them to read your content till the last and spend more time on your site. Gradually, this will result in decreasing the bounce rate of your blog. From adding captions your SEO score will be improve and results in getting higher search engine rankings.

3. Using Image Sitemaps

Whenever we create a blog, the first thing we do is to build a sitemap and add it to the webmasters tools account of various search engines.

Adding sitemap on a blog, tells search engines that there are new blog pages which need to be crawled and to be indexed. In this way you make sure that search engine look up for each and every page of your blog and index it on their search engines results.

Many bloggers creates sitemaps for their blog articles, then why not building a sitemap for images as well. This will be helping in image optimization.

By using Udinra all Image Sitemap plugin you can easily build a sitemap for all your blog images. Once you have done with making sitemap of your blog images you then submit it to search engines. Search engines will crawl and index all your blog images through your images sitemap and increase your blog SEO.

Are Image Sitemaps Really Important ?

When you are running a blog which have nothing to do more with images and wallpapers then you can avoid building image sitemaps. But in case if you are having a photography blog or a tech blog which required high amount of photos to be included then having an image sitemap would be a nice idea. This will make sure images are indexed properly by different search engines.

Image SEO &  Use of Pinterest

You might have heard about this name. Pinterest is one of the most popular social networking site which is there for sharing images online. I don’t feel that’s a good idea if you are not sharing your images on pinterest.

Since Pinterest is an authorised website, Images which are shared on this network get easily indexed and ranked in search engine results.

Do remember, whenever you add any image on your pinterest profile, make sure it is properly optimized. By adding right description and adding links with images you can get best out of seo and increase your site traffic.

Is Pinterest Really Good ?

Pinterest is not a social network for everyone out there. If you are sharing a lot of images on your profile, then it doesn’t means that you will get the same benefits which other users are getting through Pinterest.  

I have searched online and found that most of the Pinterest users are women and they mostly share images categorized to home, arts/crafts, fashion/style, travel, foods, selfies etc.

So, if you are having a tutorial based blog or mostly publish apps related articles then you might not get any significant benefits from Pinterest.

However, you can create a board and start sharing your blog images. Who knows in future the interest of pinterest users will change and your images will get popular. I’ll recommend you to keep sharing the images and add a link back to your blog by image description.

Conclusion

Well, you spend hours in creating your blog posts and please don’t waste your efforts by not optimizing your blog images properly. By following the above image optimization techniques and by carefully following the tips mentioned in the article, I’m sure you will start ranking your blog images higher in search results soon.

Hope you liked this guide. Kindly share this guide among your friends and help them too in ranking well in search engine results by proper image optimization. Also, If you have any other tools, tips or want to give any suggestion to our readers then you can use the comment box below.

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