Image Optimisation – The Forgotten Factor in SEO

When was the last time you uploaded an image onto your website? You probably downloaded an image from a stock image website, uploaded it onto the media file and inserted it onto the web page. You may feel like this is the correct way to do things to optimise your images, there is more to it than just uploading the image. This has added a heavy load onto your website and it has slowed the page speed down. Furthermore, the search engines cannot read the images without ALT tags being present. In this blog, we’ll be going through ways to make your images SEO friendly.

Importance of Compressing Images

Web pages that don’t have compressed images are the same as when you have just eaten a three-course dinner and you’re trying to do exercise on a full stomach, you cannot move as fast. The webpage is trying to move as fast as it can, however, it’s not working to its full potential because the images are slowing things down.  On average, images make up 20% of a total webpage’s weight. Here at Odyssey New Media, we recommend using WP Smush for WordPress websites. This is a plugin that compresses the image file size, while not compromising the quality of the image. There are also ways that you can see how the images on your website are impacting the speed of your website by using Google’s PageSpeed Insights Tool.

Choosing Original Images

It’s important that when you upload images on your website, they should be unique. If you are flooding your website with generic stock images, this will look unoriginal to the search engines and this may impact your rankings. When you decide to build a new website, we recommend you get a professional photographer to take some pictures of the business. This will also add a personal feel to your website. You may have stock images on your website that are perfectly optimised, however, it won’t have the same effect that original photographs will have. The more unique images you have on your website, the more enhanced the user experience will be.

Writing Optimised ALT Tags

An ALT tag is an HTML attribute used in HTML & XHTML documents to stipulate alternative text that is extracted when the image cannot be rendered. The alt attribute describes what the image file is showing. When an image doesn’t load, an image box will show with an alt tag in the top left corner. You need to ensure that your alt tags are relevant to what the image is showing. It provides the search engines with information about the subject matter of the image. They use the information to determine which is image is the best to show for the user’s search. It is important to write optimised alt tags as it helps both the user experience and search engines. It helps users with visual impairments to be able to understand what the image is showing.

Mobile-Friendly Images

There is little worse than images that do not render for mobile. It destroys the mobile user experience, that is why it’s important that not only your images need to be mobile friendly but your whole website needs to be mobile-friendly. This is something that your web developer should be aware this, it is worth asking them about how they’re going to implement a mobile-friendly website and how they are going to make the images mobile-friendly.

Contact Our Experts for Search Engine Optimisation Services

If you’re interested in SEO Management Services and would like an SEO expert to take care of your image optimisations, please get in touch with us. We have years of experience in search engine optimisation.

Call us on 0121 439 5450 or you can send us an email here.

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