When you optimize an image, make it as small as possible – in terms of download size – by using the right image compression. A well-optimized image also has the right name and alt text, so it’s optimized for search engines too.
Use images
Images, when added with a certain consideration, will help readers understand your article better. “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Yeah, well, probably not for Google, but it can spice up a 1,000 dull words, illustrate what you mean in a chart or data flow diagram, or simply make your social media posts more enticing for sure.
It’s a simple recommendation: add images to every article you write online. They’ll make it more appealing.
Finding the right image
Image SEO: This image isn’t saying ‘welcome to our company’, it’s saying ‘welcome to a company’. If you have the opportunity to add your own image, please do so. Your team page needs pictures of your team, not this dude on the right or one of his stock photo friends. Off topic: let alone that the dude needs a haircut.
Your article needs an image that has the same subject as your article. If you would use an image just to use an image and get a green bullet in our SEO plug-in, you are doing it wrong. The image should reflect the topic of the post, or have illustrative purposes within the article, of course.
There is a simple image SEO reason for that: an image that is surrounded by related text ranks better for the keyword it is optimized for. More details on image SEO later.
Alternatives
If there is no way to use images of your own, there are other ways to find unique images and refrain from using stock photos. Flickr.com is a nice image source for instance, as explained in this article: How to Use Creative Commons Images from Flickr. I also like the images provided by sites like freeimages.com (formerly known as sxc.hu). Check here for more image resources. You should stay away from the obvious stock photos, and rather pick the ones that look (ok, just a bit) more genuine. It almost seems like images with people always look like stock photos, unless taken by you. In the end, that is still the best idea.
Obvious alternatives for photos could be illustrations, like we use, or graphs, of course. An honorable mention should go to animated GIFs, as these seem to become more and more popular these days.
Image SEO: Animated GIFs are popular these days
Even with Animated GIFs being very popular these days, don’t go overboard. It’ll make your post less attractive to read, as your reading will be interrupted by the movement of the image, of course. Like in the post where I found the image above.
Preparing images for use in your article
When you have found the right image to use, an illustration, chart or photo, the next step is to optimize that image for use on your website. There are a number of things that you should think about:
Choose the right file name
Image SEO starts with the right file name. Of course, this is the first location to use that keyword. Without even looking at the actual image, you want Google to know what the image is about. It’s simple: if your image is a sunrise in Paris showing the Notre Dame, the file name shouldn’t be DSC4536.jpg, but notre-dame-paris-sunrise.jpg. The main keyword would be Notre Dame, as that is the main subject of the photo that is why I added that at the beginning of the file name.
Scale for image SEO
Loading times are important for UX and SEO. The faster the site, the easier to visit and index a page is. Images can have a huge impact on loading times, especially when you load a huge image and show it really small, like using a 2500×1500 pixels image and showing it at 250×150 pixels size. The entire image still has to be loaded. Scale the image to the size you want to show it. Word Press helps by providing the image in multiple sizes after upload already. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean the file size is optimized as well, that’s just the image size.
Use responsive images
This one is essential for SEO as well. Images might ruin the mobile experience and could increase bounce rate. Go check Bruce Lawson‘s talk at Word Camp London (2015) about responsive images and the use of the picture attribute. He also brought this plug-in to my attention as an alternative: RICG Responsive Images For Word Press. The plug-in adds the secret attribute to your images, making it possible to serve a different image per screen width. Note that Word Press adds this behavior by default from version 4.4 and they urge you to update the RICG plug-in to the latest version in that same article. If we can automate this process like that, it might be the future of web images, IMHO. I like it.
Reduce file size
The next step in image SEO should be to make sure that scaled image is served in the smallest file size possible. There are tools for that. Of course, you could just export the image and test what percentage of quality is acceptable, but I prefer (especially with retina and similar screens) to use 100% quality images.
- Image SEO: Optimize image file size using JPEG Mini
- Optimize image file size, for instance using JPEG Mini
You can still reduce the file size of these images by, for instance, removing the EXIF data. We recommend using tools like Image Optim or websites like JPEG Mini, Puny PNG or Kraken.io.
Next to using tools like the ones mentioned above, please use tools like YSlow to check if your image optimization succeeded.
Adding the image to your article
Don’t just stuff it in somewhere. I already mentioned adding it close to related textual content. That simply helps a lot. It makes sure the content is relevant for the image as well, as it is the other way around.
Source: Yoast
