There are many ways to increase traffic and generate page one rankings for your SEO campaign. If you are a photographer, or sell a lot of things with images as well as content, image optimization is a great way to help new clients find your site through image searches. Anyone with an image-heavy website can benefit from optimizing their images. It’s also a great way to enhance traditional SEO services.
To create a successful SEO campaign for images, it’s all about keeping everything short and simple. Many factors are important to remember to increase your image rankings, such as the alt text, image file name, the page on which the image is placed, and the size of the image file.
Let’s break it down, starting with alt texts. The main goal of an image alt text is user accessibility. They were first created to assist those with visual impairments, and are now utilized for SEO purposes. To stick with the theme of this post, image alt texts are simply an alternate description of a photo for those who are unable to view the actual image. For instance, if the image doesn’t load correctly, the user will be able to tell what the image should be by reading the alt text.
How do you create fantastic alt text? To enhance your alt text you should use relevant keywords that can support your description. Producing quality alt texts can benefit your SEO campaign, but you have to stop yourself from keyword stuffing, or saturating your alt texts with keywords in order to manipulate search results. Keyword stuffing is considered a sin of SEO and someone unfamiliar with it might believe it’s the overall picture. You can read more about that on the SEOhaus blog. Writing a simple, one-sentence description under 10 words can actually help increase traffic to your site.
To improve your ranking in image search engines you have to consider not only the alt text but also the image file name. You should avoid having a file name made up of a bunch of random numbers and letters. It is best to name the image file something that supports your SEO campaign. It needs to be relevant to the actual image as well as indicate which page the image can be found. Again, remember to keep the file name short and simple.
It’s also important to consider the page on which the image is placed. Both page and image should complement and support one another. The page content should pair well with the actual image, so the user can easily understand why that particular image has been chosen. Including short and simple captions can also improve your rankings on search engines. If that specific page is ranking well for a certain keyword, then it will help improve the ranking for the image as well.
Another component to look into is the image file size. No one wants to wait for page content and images to load. The size of the image can impact the loading process of the whole page. Essentially, the image file size shouldn’t be too large that it affects the time it takes for the page to load. You want your site to be user friendly while remaining appealing to visitors through amazing web design.
Overall, a short and simple approach to optimizing images for your SEO campaign can improve their ranking in image searches.
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