you are the owner of a website or blog on WordPress or elsewhere, improving image SEO is a useful factor that helps you improve your site’s results, appear in the Google Image search engine, and get more visits.
In this article, we will explain to you what the concept of image SEO is and how to benefit from it to make your website images appear in Google image search results. We will also provide you with the best tips that will help you improve the SEO of your website images. This is done using the image title (Image Title) and the alternative text of the image (Alt Text) correctly.
What is the concept of image SEO?
Today, visual content (image, video, etc.) is considered one of the things that is widely used on websites and blogs and has a significant impact on improving search results and increasing visitor interaction with the site. Here comes the concept of image SEO, in which you take some steps that help you improve Search results for images, in order to appear in the Google Image search engine.
You can improve search results for images through a set of techniques that help you reduce the size of images, as well as make the correct use of image names, image titles, alternative text, explanatory words that express images, etc.
Read also: Ways to upload images and media to WordPress and edit them correctly
Why should you care about image SEO?
If you are looking for more traffic or more sales, you need to know how important image optimization is.
- Faster site loading time. One of the very important things that affect the speed of your site is images. Therefore, you should work on reducing the size of your images to get a faster loading time, as we talked about the most important procedures for increasing the speed of your WordPress site.
- Higher ranking in search engines: A large percentage of searches today are done on image search engines. Optimizing your images will help you appear better in the image search engine and thus get more visits and sales
- Better user experience. When you display image elements correctly, including the image title and alternative text (which appears if images are not loaded), as well as compressing the image size, this helps you provide a useful user experience for visitors in discovering the content of your site.
How does image alt text help improve SEO?
Alt Text is the text that appears to the user if the image does not appear, as in this example:
There are several reasons that lead to the image not appearing or opening. There may be problems with loading or the images may have been turned off in the browser to increase connection speed or to help blind people who use screen reading programs. In this case, when writing alternative text that expresses the nature and essence of the images, this It helps users know what type of image it is and what it contains.
When Google wants to understand what an image is, it relies on alternative text to do so; So you have to write it appropriately, because it helps search engines understand and index images better.
Read also: SEO Guide for WordPress Websites
How do I write suitable alternative text?
In order to help improve search results , you must write your keywords within the alternative text in an appropriate way, in order to help search engines index the image correctly, while paying attention not to write keywords in exaggerated or filler forms, because that will not benefit you.
For example, if you write the alternative text for one image in the following form: profit from the Internet, profit from YouTube, profit from surveys, profit from the Internet, work from the Internet, profit 2021, Arab and international profit sites.
If you do not open the image, the user will see all these words in exaggerated form, and this will not accurately express what the image is.
Better, write something that expresses the image, and includes the keyword without filler. For example (the best ways to make money from the Internet 2021), in this case, you have written words that help search engines understand the image, and help them understand what the image contains when it is impossible to open it.
Writing alternative text on your WordPress site
If you have a WordPress website or blog, you can click Add Media Files
Then a window will open for you to choose the image you want to upload, and on the right side you will notice an Alt Text field .
Note: You can leave the Alt text field blank if the image is a decoration or a decorative element in general.
How image titles help improve image SEO
The image title is the title or words that appear to you when you hover your mouse over the image. This title is not displayed to users if they cannot open the image, such as alternative text. The image title is not considered one of the things that helps you improve image SEO. Or ranking in search engines in general, and can be overlooked.
The title of the image differs from the name of the image, because the name of the image is considered a fixed name that cannot be changed, such as (Learn-seo.png), while the title of the image can be changed from within WordPress and written any title you want, for example (Learn SEO).
Add Image Title in WordPress
From within the WordPress editor, we click on the “Edit” button to edit the image
After that, we choose advanced options, and write the appropriate title for the image in the Image Title attribute field.
Then when we move the mouse cursor over the image, the title of the image will appear.
Does the image name affect SEO?
In general, the correct image name (File Name) can help in better understanding of the images and thus affect the ranking in search engines. When search engines crawl the site, they do not read the site as the user does, but rather see the existing code and crawl inside it.
Therefore, it is recommended to write the name of an image that expresses its meaning, in order to help archive the site and appear in search results. It is also preferable to write the name of the images and place a sign (-) between each word, such as (ready-select-maps) in order to make it easier for search engines. Recognizing and classifying the written word.
Also, one of the important things regarding the name of the image is that once the image is uploaded to your site and published, this name will be combined with the link (URL), so not naming it correctly will not help you classify and understand it by search engines.
You can click on the image to show you how the link looks combined with the name
Note : You must pay attention to writing the name of the image appropriately before uploading it. If you forget to do this, you will need to delete the images and upload them again, or if you own a WordPress site, you can use the Enable Media Replace plugin , which allows you to add and rename images from within WordPress, without deleting them.
Also, in general, you should avoid naming the image with names such as (Image), (Pic), (Picture), numbers, or the like, as this will not help Google understand the true meaning of the image.
Also, avoid using the sign (_). If you name the image (mapping_device), Google will read it as follows (mapping_device), and this will not help improve the image’s SEO. Also, do not stuff keywords in the name of the image, but write clearly and expressively about the image.
Improving image SEO on WordPress sites
WordPress gives you many features and features, as well as many add-ons that help you improve the SEO of images without the need for technical or programming experience. First, when you insert an image by clicking on Add Media Files
A new window will open for you to upload the image you want, and on the right side of the screen we notice 3 options:
- Alternative text : You can place the keyword appropriately (as we talked about above)
- Explanatory words : You can explain what the pictures are, or you can write the same words as in the alternative text.
- Description : An actual description of what is in the image. For example, you have a picture of a white rabbit; This means we write here (white rabbit)
WordPress also provides you with several plugins that help you improve search results in general, as well as improve image SEO. For example, the Yoast plugin provides you with many options that help you improve images, by examining your article from several aspects:
- Are there pictures in the article or not?
- Did you add data for the images (alt text, captions, and description)
- Have you typed keywords into alt text or image data?
- Examining the percentage of keywords written within image data
As in this tip, one of the tips for adding Yoast in one of the articles, which recommends that you place the keyword text in the alternative text. For more, read the detailed explanation that we prepared previously about explaining the use of Yoast SEO .
The most important tips for improving image SEO
If you own a website or blog on WordPress or elsewhere, there are some tips that will help you improve search results for images and thus your site in general.
1- Use the appropriate image : User experience is one of the most important things that Google searches for, so you should use images when there is a need for that and when they help you provide a better explanation to visitors, as well as high-quality images.
2- Writing alternative text for images : The alternative text and name help improve image SEO, as well as Google and search engines’ understanding of images.
3- Writing appropriate image names : In order for search engines to understand your images correctly, you must write a name that expresses the nature of the image, so that it can be better archived and classified.
4- Compress images to increase page loading speed : Website loading speed is one of the most important ranking factors in search engines. You must work on compressing images, to increase page loading speed and create a comfortable user experience for visitors. We talked before about how to compress the size of your site’s images without losing the quality.
5- Choose the appropriate extension for images : Most of the extensions that you can work with today are (PNG, JPEG, WebP). Where PNG gives you better images but in a larger size, while JPEG will have a smaller size.
Also, the WebP format gives you a high-quality image in a small size, but it is not supported by all browsers. It works on (Chrome and Firefox)
6- Copyright : There are many images on the Internet, which are often used on websites. Make sure to use images without copyright. It is best to design unique images for your site, because this may affect the ranking of your site by using an image that you do not own the copyright.
7- Paying attention to the title and description of health – Page Title & Description . According to what Google announced, it uses the page title and description as part of its image search algorithm.
8- Specifying the dimensions of images : One of the things that helps you provide a better user experience is specifying the dimensions of the image (width and height), and this in turn will help you obtain a better ranking in search engines.
9- Mobile compatibility : One of the most important things that helps in improvement and ranking is mobile compatibility, due to the large number of users who search for images via mobile phone, and we previously talked about how your site should be responsive and friendly to smartphones.
10- Adding images to the site map : One of the things that helps search engines crawl your images and index them well is adding them to the site map .
In the end, today the concept of image SEO is considered one of the important matters that website owners should not ignore. You must make sure to improve the search results for your site’s images in order to obtain a better ranking in the image search results by applying the tips that we explained in the previous lines, including naming the images correctly. Then compress the images to reduce size and increase speed, as well as choose the appropriate extension. After that, you must write the appropriate alternative text, as well as take care of the meta data, add images to the site map, and all the elements that affect the naming of the images
