Image SEO is an important part of search engine optimization. It’s not uncommon for a website to have as many as 100 images on it, and the more relevant they are to your site’s content, the better.
There are several ways you can improve the ranking of your image sites. Most of them will be quite easy to implement at all. The following tips should help.
Use Alt Tags
The alt tag is used in case there are no descriptions provided for an image. Google uses this information when indexing an image, so if you don’t specify one, then they won’t use that image.
Don’t use spaces in your alt tags. This causes problems with some browsers, and it breaks the code of other browsers.
You should list the most common keywords with your alt tag. These are usually related to the page title. For example, if the title is “A New York City Guide To Hotels,” you could include “hotel” or “tourist” or “New York.”
Make sure you use descriptive words in your alt tag for each image. Don’t just put a keyword phrase like “New York Hotel” in there. Instead, explain what the image is about. If you’re selling tickets to a football game, for example, you might say “Football Tickets In New York.”
If you have multiple images that relate to the same subject, you can link them together by using the rel=”lightbox” attribute. When users click on the lightbox, they’ll see thumbnails of all the images related to the main picture.
To make sure that your images display properly, you need to add a width and height to the img element. You should also set the src attribute to point to the correct location.
Add a Description
When Google indexes your images, it looks at the text surrounding the image. So if you provide a short description of the image, Google will place more weight on that than if you simply put “image” inside the alt tag.
Some people prefer to write their own descriptions instead of relying on the alt tag. If you’ve got time to do it, this is fine, but remember that you don’t want to overdo it. The description needs to be concise, and it shouldn’t contain too much information.
Avoid Long Descriptions
If you have a long description, especially if it contains lots of jargon, the Googlebot may decide it’s not worth displaying the image because it doesn’t read well. If you have a lot of images on your site, it’s best to keep things simple and easy to read.
For example, if you have a product that has 50 different options, it would be difficult for a human user to read through all those details. But Google is looking for specific keywords, so if you use terms that relate to those keywords, Google will find it easier to understand what the description means.
Include Keywords In Image Names
Google ranks pages based on the amount of relevant content on every page. One way you can get around this problem is to name your images very carefully. If possible, try to include keywords that are relevant to your site into the file names. Google will recognize these keywords and rank your site higher.
It’s also a good idea to create image sitemaps. A sitemap tells Google how to navigate your site. It includes links to all of the images on your site, along with information such as when they were uploaded, who uploaded them, and which category they belong to.
Create a Separate Page For Each Category
When building a website, it’s important to separate out the different sections into categories. This helps with navigation, and it makes it easier for someone to find information quickly. Each category should have its own web page (with a unique address) so that visitors can easily access it from anywhere on your site.
When creating new pages, make sure that they’re optimized for SEO. Include proper titles and descriptions in the HTML header. Make sure the image files are linked correctly, and that the image files are listed in the sitemap.
If you follow these techniques, you can rest assured that your image sites will perform well on the search engines. By taking care of these steps, you’ll ensure that your images are optimized for maximum exposure.