Optimizing images for SEO

Search engines also include these images while crawling and indexing the website. They affect your findability, so it is important that you also optimize your images. But how do you do this?

Why do I need to optimize my images?

Optimizing an image for SEO revolves around two important aspects: context and load time.

On the one hand, you want to let search engines know what the image is about so the algorithm can determine that that image is actually relevant relative to the text, topic or keyword. That can help in your rankings.

In addition, the loading time of your website also plays an important role. By adding (many) images to a page, it can take quite a long time to load. You don't want that, because you (and Google!) want to present visitors with a user-friendly website. So it is important that your images have as little effect as possible on the loading time.

How do you optimize an image for SEO?

This is how you can optimize images for SEO:

Add alt text

An alt text is the alternative text displayed when an image fails to load for some reason. Handy. But adding alt text to an image also helps a search engine understand what your image is about. So always add the keyword you want to be found on to the alt text of your images. This way you give the search engine an immediate push in the right direction.

File name

In addition to the alt text, the file name is also a tool to help a search engine understand what an image is about. So always provide a relevant file name that matches the image and the content of the page.

So don't use "screenshot1.jpg" as the file name, but make sure it is relevant to your content. We therefore recommend (as with your alt text) to always include your main keyword in the file name. This is because by doing so, you immediately indicate that the image is relevant to the keyword your page is written on.

Customize file size

The file size of an image affects the loading speed of your website. We often see large images of sometimes several MBs. This image is then automatically scaled, but must be fully loaded. As a result, it often takes longer before it is visible on your website. We recommend always resizing an image to a maximum size of 100kb.

A handy tool you can use for this is Tinypng.com. This tool helps you resize images so they have less impact on the load time of your page.

File Type

The file type of your image often has a big impact on the file size. For example, we often see .png files being uploaded. We always recommend uploading an image in .jpg. The difference in quality between the two file types is minimal, while a .jpg image often has a lower file size and thus loads faster.

Check out our blog here: JPG vs. PNG. Which extension is better for uploading photos to your website from an SEO standpoint?

Optimize images for mobile as well

Make sure your images are always optimized for mobile use. How? By using responsive images. This will ensure that your images display correctly on all different screen sizes. This prevents your images and your content from jumping around when opened on different mobile devices. This again contributes to usability (and your rankings)!