Image SEO: How to Do SEO for Your Images

Much of the discussion around search engine optimization (SEO) today understandably revolves around text-based content, meticulously crafting keywords, and optimizing meta data. In this process, we tend to overlook images’ crucial role in driving user engagement and improving your search engine rankings.

Image optimization for SEO, better known as image SEO, makes your images easily discoverable by search engines, drives more website traffic, and improves rankings. Learn everything you need to know to get started with this Coalition Technologies guide.

Keyword Research

Keyword research forms the bedrock of any successful SEO strategy, and SEO for images is no exception. You need to identify relevant keywords that align with your audience and describe your content accurately.

If you’ve already worked on an SEO strategy, you probably know which keywords to use in your image metadata. Otherwise, you’re going to want to take the time to identify these keywords so you can implement them in:

• Image file names
• Alt-texts for your images
• The text surrounding each image

What does keyword research involve when you’re performing SEO for images?

This process generally involves a combination of keyword research tools and competitor analysis. If you’re new to image optimization for SEO or just SEO in general, you can always start with a free tool like Google Keyword Planner. Remember to look at both types of keywords during your research:

• Short-Tail Keywords: These are brief keywords that signal generic search intent. They are highly competitive but also have high search volumes. Examples include ‘shirt’ and ‘furniture.’
  
• Long-Tail Keywords: These terms carry less search volume, but there’s also less overall competition. Brands looking to stand out in competitive spaces use these keywords more often.
  
  Examples of common long-tail keywords include: ‘silk shirt for men’ and ‘contemporary bedroom furniture.’ 

There is no clear winner here regarding performing SEO for images. Each keyword type has unique advantages suitable for specific goals, and 95% of keywords get less than ten monthly searches. If you need help conducting keyword research for SEO, we recommend consulting a reliable SEO expert.

Create Descriptive and Keyword-Optimized Alt-Text

Alt-text describes an image used when it cannot be loaded. This metadata plays a crucial role in image optimization for SEO, even though its primary purpose is user accessibility.

Besides its role in SEO for images, creating optimized alt-text is also a great way to stand out from the herd. 21.6% of home page images lack alt-text, and 14% of images with alt-text feature repetitive descriptions.

When writing alt-text, be as descriptive and concise as possible. The goal is to provide your visitors context and value while naturally incorporating relevant keywords.

Consider this example:

An example of good alt-text for this image with relevant keywords (red pasta sauce) could be:

‘Plate of spaghetti with red pasta sauce’

While a generic, unoptimized alt-text would be something like:

‘Plate of food’

Use Different Image Formats

Website performance is critical for image SEO. Different image formats can help you optimize your website’s performance and improve the overall user experience.

JPEGs are the go-to image optimization format for SEO, and it’s easy to see why. JPEG files take minimal resources and can be compressed while retaining image quality (up to a certain point). PNG offers lossless compression to preserve an image’s quality even after multiple edits. This format is excellent for images with sharp lines and text, like logos or graphics. PNG files also allow for a transparent background.

Compressing Images for SEO

Heavy visual assets like large images can slow page load times and drive visitors away. This, in turn, shows search engines that your website isn’t an ideal choice for searchers. Here’s how compressing your images can help: 

• Enhanced User Experience: A website that loads quickly is more likely to engage and retain visitors. Give your first-time visitors a reason to stay, explore, and keep coming back. Remember, every slight improvement in the user experience can help with image SEO.

• Better Crawling: Search engine bots have limited time to crawl your website. By compressing images, you free up more of their crawl budget and allow them to index more of your pages.
  

You can use online tools like TinyPNG to compress and optimize your images for SEO. WordPress plugins and programs like Photoshop allow users to compress pictures quickly and efficiently. You’ll also want to keep the following best practices in mind when compressing images for SEO.

• Use Images Wisely: Even compressed images take time and resources to load. Avoid using too many decorative images on your pages.
  
• Use Plugins: If you’re using a CMS like WordPress, you could use plugins to automate the compression progress and save time.
  
• Maintain Quality: Compression isn’t the end goal when performing SEO for images; it’s user satisfaction. Don’t compress your photos so much that they turn blurry or illegible for visitors. Product images should be as clear as possible. Select the format that best suits the type of image and the level of quality you need.
  
• Monitor Performance: Once you’ve compressed and uploaded your optimized images, monitor your website’s performance metrics to track the results. Following this and other website management practices will ensure your website performs and ranks optimally.
  

Add Images to Sitemaps

A sitemap offers search engines an overview of your website, helping crawlers understand its structure and content. Google recommends adding images to your sitemap as a publishing best practice. Doing this is helpful when performing SEO for images as it provides search engines valuable context about the content of those images and how they relate to the content on your page.

There are two ways to include pictures in your sitemap when you’re optimizing images for SEO:

1. Create a Dedicated Image Sitemap: This option is recommended for websites with many images. Dedicated image sitemaps don’t link to specific pages like standard sitemaps; instead, they use HTML tags to reference images.
   
   Creating a dedicated image sitemap can be time-consuming if you have many images. Consider working with a trusted web design expert to create one and optimize the rest of your website.
   
2. Add To Your Existing Sitemap: If you prefer a more straightforward approach to SEO for images, you can implement metadata straight into your existing sitemaps using HTML tags for each web page.

Banners and Infographics

A sleek, well-written infographic is one of the best ways to engage searchers. However, designers often embed text within the image itself. Doing this can hinder your SEO efforts, as crawlers need help understanding embedded text. Here’s why you should separate the text from your infographics:

• Crawlability: Optimizing crawlability is a massive part of SEO for images. Search engine bots primarily focus on crawling and indexing text-based content. You’ll improve crawlability and optimize your images for SEO by using HTML text overlays.
  
• Accessibility: Separating text from images also helps searchers who use screen readers to access web content. Screen readers can easily interpret and convey HTML text, while they might struggle to decipher text embedded within images.
  
• Flexibility: You never know when you want to update information in an infographic or banner. Using HTML text allows for easier editing and updating of your content and its use in SEO for images. Instead of modifying the image file, you can simply update the HTML text.

Banners are easy. You can use a background image and overlay HTML text on top of it using CSS. The result is the same for the visitor, so it’s all upside. 

Infographics can be more complex, but with some development and design expertise, you can create engaging and crawlable ones. The Coalition Technologies team, for instance, has made many responsive and crawlable SVG format infographics for clients.

Add Structured Data

Also known as schema markup, structured data is a powerful tool for image SEO that allows you to give search engines explicit information about the content on your web pages. 

How do you optimize images for SEO using structured data? It’s simpler than you might think! Google recommends adding a JSON-LD script to your web page’s <head> section containing the ImageObject schema markup.

Implementing schema markup for image SEO can also enable rich snippets for your images in SERPs, displaying additional information like captions and photographer details alongside the image thumbnail. Structured data doesn’t guarantee that your images will appear in rich snippets, but it can increase your chances. 

Optimize Images for Social Sharing

When you share a web page’s URL on social media platforms like Facebook or X/Twitter, a page preview typically appears, including a title, description, and thumbnail image. 

Open Graph tags are meta tags that Facebook and other social media platforms primarily use to understand a web page’s content. Twitter Cards are similar to Open Graph tags but are specifically designed for X/Twitter. 

Using Open Graph and Twitter Card tags lets you control how your web pages appear when shared on these platforms, specifying which image should be used as the preview thumbnail. Social sharing is a huge part of SEO for images, especially on image-dominant platforms like Facebook and X/Twitter.

Lazy Loading

This tip applies to SEO as a whole, not just image optimization for SEO. Lazy loading defers the loading of non-critical images and other assets until needed. For example, if a user clicks on a blog post covering the 20 best photos of the year and looks at the first three photos, the page shouldn’t load the elements below the fold (images 4-20) until the user scrolls down.

• Improved Load Speeds: We’ve established that load times are essential for image SEO. Lazy loading significantly reduces the initial page load time by delaying the loading images that aren’t immediately needed. This is particularly beneficial for pages with many images, like listicles.
  
• Better UX: Faster page load times lead to a more responsive and engaging user experience. Users who visit a website that loads in under three seconds are 60% more likely to see more pages. By retaining users and encouraging conversions, you will also signal your website’s relevance to search engines.

Get Started Today

SEO for images is a detailed but rewarding process. Creating a dedicated sitemap, performing extensive keyword research and competitor analysis, and writing optimized alt-text for all your images will pay dividends for your web traffic. 

If you’d like to free up that time and let experts handle your optimization with data-driven strategies, contact Coalition Technologies! We’ve helped thousands of businesses drive results with custom SEO strategies, and we’d love to show you how. Contact us for a free consultation today.