How to optimize images for SEO

Quite basic tips I know but to get maximum results for image search it does require a strict process which must be maintained to achieve best results.

Image location

  • Don’t save your images in an external location (like an image hosting company)
  • Don’t save your images in your root directory (i.e. www.domain.com/photo1.jpg)
  • If you have a small to medium sized website I would recommend keeping you images in a separate folder named “images” i.e. www.domain.com/images/photo1.jpg
  • If you run or maintain a large website or an e-commerce website then managing images should be more categorised, for example:

www.domain.com/images/cars/blue-car.jpg

Image naming

  • Quite obvious but make the image either gif, Jpeg or Png  format
  • Use targeted keywords that give accurate representations of what’s in the image
  • Using your targeted keywords as image descriptions may up your on page keyword density but this does not portray an accurate representation of what your image is.
  • Common image naming structure:

http://www.domain.com/images/keyword1-keyword2.jpg

  • Bad image naming structures:

http://www.domain.com/images/photo1.jpg
http://www.domain.com/images/cars/catid29876.jpg

Image placement

I have created a mock to show how I would choose my image placements for a page trying to optimise for Bill Gates + Microsoft. Based on experience image optimisation only really helps when you make the images as relevant as possible to the content you are writing about.

Image Tag

An example of a good image tag (Alt tag) would be:

  • <img src=”images/bill-gates.jpg” width=”100” height=”100” alt=”Bill Gates”>

An example of a bad image tag would be:

  • <img src=”images/photo1.jpg” alt=”Microsoft’s Bill Gates Microsoft”>

Like I said this is quite basic stuff but think it’s important to be reminded of it at times as I for one have been lazy at times and have not always followed this out.


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