What is SEO?
Before we discuss how to use image optimization and file-naming, we will need to understand exactly what SEO is and how it works. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is a digital marketing function that combines the use on content creation with technological development. The goal of SEO is to optimize the amount of visits that a website receives by utilizing multiple techniques that rank it higher in the search results. Some key things you want to focus on when creating an SEO plan are the quality of the users your site attracts and the amount of website traffic you are getting.
How to Use Image Optimization
There are tons of techniques that a business owner can implement to increase their organic search results, but we will focus on how use an image to optimize a website’s visibility in organic search. A content creator could use an image tag and alt attribute to gain visitors to a particular website. An image tag or name is just that, the file name that a user gives to the particular image. We use image tags because it gives search engines reinforcement as to what the content of the website includes. Keep in mind not to name an image something that is not relevant, regardless of if that is the topic of the page. For example, I would not want to name an image of grapes, “SEO-Marketing”, even though this web page is about SEO. That would just create confusion for the search engine.
An alt attribute is found in the HTML image tag, and it allows the creator of the site to, again, add more information about what is found in the image. Not only does the alt tag tell the search engine what the image is, but is also what appears to users whose image could not be shown for whatever reason. In this case, you want the user to be able to determine what the image is of that should be there. When inserting an alt attribute, be sure to use quotations if you are naming the image something with multiple words. When completed, the alt attribute should look something like this:
<img alt="SEO Marketing Photo" src="http://example.com/seo-marketing.jpg" />
For more detailed information on how to insert an alt attribute into your website take a look at How to Write Great Alt Text for Website Images.
Other factors to consider when using website images are where these images are being placed relative to the text, how big the image file size is, and whether or not you want to include an image caption with the photo. This may seem obvious, but it is a common mistake content creators make when setting up a webpage, remember to align the image near the text that it is most relevant to. Sometimes content creators forget that viewers use images to guide themselves through an article and use it as a clue to what information can be found in the nearby text. Another thing to keep in mind is how big the file size of the image is; this effects the loading ability and speed of the image and website. Furthermore, captions are an excellent way to continue to optimize Image SEO throughout a website. This gives the search engine and the viewers even more information about the image content and website as a whole; the more places we can reiterate our keywords, the better chance our site will have at getting a better Google ranking than other, similar sites. This website has some more in depth information on the topic of image placement.
Web developers must consider all these factors and work together with a sites marketing team tin order to create a page that not only serves its purpose to the company but also optimizes every area it can in order to rank highly among other native searches. Having a great SEO strategy could be the key difference of one company succeeding over another, just as great company, with a weak or nonexistent SEO strategy.
Emily Kirsche