Image optimization for SEO is more important now than ever before. Google is no longer like a toddler you can entertain with a picture book and basic words, but rather a sophisticated teenager, who not only needs to be captivated, but also to experience the thrill of speed.
The first mistake many ‘green’ website manager make is that they try to upload an image that is 3 Megabytes in size. With mobile data at a premium, no one wants to spend their precious money downloading a very large background image on your website. It’s slow, It eats data, and the visitor most likely will not return.
So let’s Edit and Optimize those images the right way…
Hint: Try Adobe Photoshop Express
Image SEO Checklist
1. Composing Your Image
- Use original images
- Remove text from images
- Remove useless images
- Background Images: Give room for text
- General Images: Crop to show only necessary information
2. Preparing An Image
- Use a 4:3 or 16:9 ratio (1200x800 / 1920x1080)
- Scale your images to the exact dimensions you need
- Use high-definition Retina images
- Use next-gen formats (JPG,PNG,SVG)
- Compress your images
- Use descriptive titles
3. Serving The Image
- Enable Browser Caching
- Use a CDN
- Enable Lazy loading
- Double check that you’re using Responsive Images
4. Identifying The Image
- Fill Out the Alt Text
- Use a caption
- Use your keywords in the text surrounding your image
- Use your keywords in the page URL, meta description and throughout your page
5. Extra Credit
- Create an image sitemap
- Use Social Media tags
- Use Structured Data
That's All For Now!
We’ll come-back to elaborate on each of these items and the process by which you can achieve them. That stated, many of the above items are Automatically taken care-of when you build a business website on bizProWeb.
