“A picture is worth a thousand words"—Tess Flanders. Although this quote was first used in the printing era, its relevance has doubled, if not tripled, in the internet era.
Humans' attention spans are decreasing daily, and the tendency to consume visual content has grown more than ever.
Search engines constantly look for the best image that meets their requirements to rank at the top of the search results. But with a sea of images along with the recent images created using AI tools, ranking images has never been more difficult, but you can still rank at the top of the search with amazing ranking results if you follow the right way to optimize your image.
I'll tell you the exact steps you need to take to optimize your image to reap the benefits of image ranking and get amazing ranking results.
What is Image SEO?
Image SEO is not rocket science; it’s basically some best practices suggested by Google to crawl, index, and get better ranking in relevant search results.
Google will soon launch a new AI-generative search experience that will load images from web pages into search results pages.
This can create enormous potential for increasing your website's CTR, and you don’t want to miss that, would you? This makes image SEO more important than ever before.
Tips for Improving Google Image SEO Rankings
Keyword Research
Why would I put keyword research at the top of my list? The reason is simple: keywords are the main driving factor that ranks your images on search engines. Using the wrong keyword on your image will prevent it from appearing in search results. Look for the key terms that people search for when looking for your product or service, and add those to your image keyword.
Choose the Right Image Format
Did you know that the type of image you choose can play an important role in deciding your page size? Image formats such as GIF can take up a larger file size compared to PNG or JPEG. It's ideal to use image formats like PNG, JPEG, and WebP. However, it’s best to use WebP.
The Image File's Name
Imagine you have selected a beautiful image of a coffee mug that matches the type of coffee mug your reader is looking for, but the image name is "IMG395.png," which appears to the crawler as follows:
<img src=”IMG395.png”/>
The crawler doesn't find the information particularly useful; however, if a competitor uses a familiar image with the file name:
<img src=”ceramic_coffee_mug.png”/>
Which one will the crawler understand better?
The better the crawler understands what the image is about, the higher the chances the image will rank better.
Alt Text
The alt (alternative text ) helps individuals with visual impairments (or screen readers) to understand what the image is about.
It also plays a crucial role in helping crawlers understand the relevance of an image to the user.
Write the alt description of the image objectively and briefly; it will be beneficial if you can use the keyword to rank, but make sure it sounds natural.
Example:
Bad:
<img src=”ceramic_coffee_mug.png” alt=””/>
Good:
<img src=”ceramic_coffee_mug_on_desk.png” alt=”ceramic coffee mug on a wooden desk”/>
It’s important to understand that every Google search factor is interconnected with one another, and following the best practices by Google will help you rank better on Google search pages and thus get better results for your website.