On Page SEO – Image Optimization

You have written your blog. Then you proofed it. You love it. You created awesome visual creative content to enhance all your insightful information. Do you just throw it up there willy nilly and hope it works, or are there also tools and techniques for incorporating imagery into your blog posts? (As I’m sure you’ve surmised from the title of this post, as well as the fact that I’m actually writing it, that is a rhetorical question.

Tips for Optimizing Your Images

Choose Wisely:

One of the first things you need to do when preparing an image for your blog is make sure that you choose an appropriate image that corresponds to the content. If your blog talks about the newest smartphone, then you should have images of smartphones, or at least something technologically based, rather than this uber cute photo of an otter. Sure it’s adorable, but it has nothing to do with the topic.

What is in a name?

Once you have found or created the correct image you’ll want to make sure you name it correctly. Use a keyword or keywords that match your content. Your reader will appreciate the visual connection, and your search engine will appreciate that matching text. Another method is adding a strong relevant caption to you image. this will further assist the search engine to the relationship between image and text.

Give Alternatives:

Make sure you apply Alt Text to the image.This will give additional help to the search engines as far as what is the subject of the image. Be careful not to just crap a whole lot of keywords in, just keep it simple and to the point, aim for five words or less.

Simple Formats:

There are a ton of graphical formats out there, try and keep it to the most popular ones; .jpg, .gif, and .png. That way you can ensure your readers can both see and share what you are giving them.

Size Does Matter:

You need to find that happy medium where the graphics are not too small for the viewer to see, but you need to make sure they will not take forever to load (and by forever, I mean more than a second or two). Make sure you change the size the image to the appropriate dimensions before you upload them, rather than loading up gigantic ones that need to re-sized within the blog. You can also manually edit the size the image in HTML if need be, at least that will help with the load times.

Balance:

Make sure you maintain a balance between text and images. Depending on the volume of information that is in the image, you can determine how much text is needed. Just a simple photo or graphic should be used to accompany text, while an infographic, video or SlideShare will actually take the place of most of the copy in the blog and will only need a small amount of introductory verbiage. Visually, it should all have a flow to it, so that the view easily knows what image and what text go together.

On Page SEO – Image Optimization