More than half of the purchased images in an image bank as Fotolia downloaded to web formats, to illustrate web pages, blogs, social networks, newsletters or banners. If this proportion recalls the growing importance of images on the web, you should also prompt us to ask how to make the best use of our images.
As for text content, classic SEO tips can be applied to images. Content is king, you have to take care of their quality and how to teach it. But some specific recommendations to be perfectly optimized images are also:
- Choose a descriptive title that corresponds to the image and, if possible, include an important word for positioning. Never leave the original title can have the image often is a number if it comes from an image bank.
- Optimize the size of your images on the web a very high resolution is not usually necessary. Search engines prefer pages load quickly and the weight of the images greatly influences it.Although many CMS allow upload high resolution photos in different formats and editing, it is advisable to cut and / or resize the images before uploading them to your server, keeping its dimensions between 320 and 1280 pixels and using the JPG format with proper compression.
- Learn the relevant keywords for your images and common themes of your website. For that, Google provides tools like Keyword Planner that allows to know what most Internet users seek. If you are hesitating between two synonyms to express an idea, use the most searched word.
- Enter an ALT attribute with relevant keywords to each image.But beware! They should be used sentences and phrases, not single words, and should not exceed 8 words.
- In the ALT attribute, including “image” or “picture” in the keywords. Many searches are done with these words accompanied another word and allows search engine bots know that the content is an image.
- Write captions beneath your images as in newspapers, descriptive captions with relevant keywords. Now, with HTML5, you can use the label to inform search engines that is a legend of an image.
- Note the text or semantics around the images. The images will be better positioned on Google Images if the texts and titles that surround contain relevant words.
- Change your content regularly graphics. As for the texts, we must renew the images of a web. If the type of website that does not allow it , consider opening a blog and try to write at least about 3 articles a week. Google likes novelty!
- Use several times the same images on their website. If an image is used properly, its position in Google Images will be given a multiple use.
- Try to have external links to your articles and images. Google also takes into account the number of clicks and traffic generated by each image, which in fine helps the positioning of the website.