At the origin of SEO, image referencing was a lever of web accessibility for visually impaired people. Today, with the evolution of Google and search engines in general, this lever is becoming a real acquisition lever in its own right, especially for e-commerce sites.
But is SEO image optimization really essential or even vital for your website?
SEO optimization for your images is good SEO practice. In particular, it allows you to strengthen your semantic power through the use of keywords and ensure your presence in Google Images, in particular.
By reading the keywords that you associate with your image, search engines are able to understand what its main subject is and give it meaning and therefore, ultimately, position it in a logical and relevant way for Internet users. In this article, the Transacts team explains how to proceed to use this leverage effectively for your business.
Why should you care about SEO for your images?
There are many reasons why you should optimize the SEO for your images. As said above, it is above all a concern of accessibility for the visually impaired or blind people. But the power of images is no longer limited to this aspect of the web.
Now images represent a real lever for SEO acquisition. In fact, in 2001 Google Images was launched, which initially represented a massive index of images linking to their original site. Several information was put forward, namely the size of the image , its weight , its format as well as an extract of the explanatory text of the image (hence the interest in optimizing this text).
Whereas at the time, images were accessible as a mosaic of thumbnails and a click on an image instantly (or almost) opened its original page, since 2013 (for the United States and 2017 in France), the interface of Google Images has undergone a radical change. Now, when clicking on an image, a banner with a black background opens, thus keeping the user in Google instead of switching them to the site that owns the visual.
In addition, interaction buttons have been added and allow you to “Consult ” the page, simply ” Display the image ” or ” Share ” the image. A selection of similar images is also offered to the Internet user. And if it is a query that may correspond to e-commerce, the price and availability (in stock, out of stock, in restocking) will also be visible.
As you will have understood, optimizing the SEO of your images is not negligible for your business. They can not only generate additional traffic but also business if you are an e-commerce. What’s more, images come before pure search results, so they’re much more visually accessible than the link to your site.
How to optimize the referencing of your images?
Now that you know why you absolutely have to work on SEO for your images, you are probably wondering: but then, can I do this work myself or do I have to hire SEO professionals? Rest assured, this job is quite simple and by following our step-by-step methodology, you will easily be able to do it yourself.
Think about the name of your file
One of the things that not many people think about but that matters is the name of your file when you upload it to your site. Indeed, naming your image as explicitly as possible will make it much easier for search engines to understand what your visual is about.
So, prefer a name like t-shirt-vert-homme.jpg rather than 123456789.jpg (or other incomprehensible sequence of characters).
Do not forget the caption of your image
When you upload an image to your site, you have the option to give it a caption. Do not hesitate to use it!
This legend will be taken up by search engines in order to clarify your image and its context.
Optimize the alt tag
The alt tag is a tag associated with your image directly in the page code. This allows you to associate a short text (3 or 4 words maximum) allowing you to contextualize the image and to explain it to search engines.
Although its role is similar to that of the caption, the alt tag should not be too long and in particular allows you to use keywords corresponding to the SEO queries you are targeting.
Think about the format and size of your image
The user experience being at the heart of the evolutions of Google (and of the other search engines), it is therefore important, even essential, to think about the web performances of the latter.
It will therefore be a question of not using just any format. So prefer the JPG (or JPEG) format for your photos. Indeed, it is very light and can manage up to 16 million colors. It is very useful for photos that do not need transparency. This is also the most common format.
Also, remember to compress your image. This will prevent the browser from taking too long to load an image of significant size and weight. It will also promote user experience on mobile.
My images are optimized but Google still does not reference them. What to do ?
Did you follow our previous recommendations but your images still do not appear in Google or worse, are old photos being offered? Don’t panic, this is pure SEO and you don’t always have the tools to do it all.
The Transacts team, a site creation and SEO specialist, will help you get your images listed in Google (and other search engines of course)!
