10 Things to Remember When Optimising Images for SEO

Images are essential on your website. They help to make your content more engaging, and optimise conversion rates by increasing the chance of someone clicking on a link or buying something online. However, many people don’t optimise their images before they upload them onto their websites. This blog post will share 10 important things you need to remember when optimising images for SEO purposes!

Pick the right image file formats

Most websites optimize images using JPEG, but this is not always necessary. If you are uploading a photo onto your website that people will want to download later, then it’s best to optimize with PNG or GIF files. However, if you have an infographic on your website, chances are most of your visitors won’t be saving it onto their computers, so JPEG will optimize your images for faster loading speeds.

There are many different image formats that optimize SEO;

File NameDescription
JPEG/ JPG (Joint photographers Expert GroupJPEG is the most common image format used by digital cameras, it is the most common format for storing and transmitting photographic images on the World Wide Web or printing photos
PNG (Portable Network GraphicsPNG was created to improve GIF image-file format. Removing patent license issues at that time; and removing 256 colors limitation. Great for Icons and illustrations.
TIFF/TIF (Tagged Image FIle Format)TIFF is a file format for storing images losslessly. It is widely supported by image-manipulation applications, by scanning, faxing, word processing, optical character recognition and other applications.
PDF (Portable Document Format)PDF is a file format used to present documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout flat document, including the text, fonts, graphics, and other information needed to display it.
GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)GIF is a bitmap image format that allows a lossless compression by reducing the image to 256 distinct colours. It has been replaced by PNG after fear over patent issues. It is still widely used for animation as it’s the only format that supports animation and that is widely supported by browsers.
RAWRAW relates to several image file formats since each camera manufacturer has one or several formats (depending on equipments). These files contains the data acquired by sensors almost unprocessed.
HEIFHigh Efficiency Image File Format is a container format developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). The format has several variants and supports individual or sequences of images. Commonly used for Iphone photos.
WebPWebP is an image file format developed by Google, and supposed to be a new open standard for lossily compressed true colour graphics. It’s a direct competitor to JPEG and recommended for web images.
SVGSVG is an XML based file format. It allows to create vector graphics with animation and interaction support. It can be edited with any text editor.

Resize your images

Another important step to optimize image SEO is resizing them! If you are uploading large sized photos (over 2000px), then the page load time will be high for anyone visiting your website. You don’t want people leaving because of this! Resizing your images is the best way to optimize image load speeds, without sacrificing quality.

Choose the right compression rate

With JPEG files it’s important you choose a high enough compression rate (ideally 60-70%). This will optimize file sizes without compromising on quality. However, if you are uploading an infographic or other type of image that people will need to download, it’s best not to optimize them with JPEG files.

There are two main types of image compressions that optimise SEO; lossy, Lossless.

  • Lossy Compression is used to optimise images for fast loading speeds, and can be used on photos, illustrations or any other type of image. This is the preferred method if you are looking to optimise your site speed for SEO purposes!
  • Lossless Compression is great when optimising infographics and other types of charts/graphs that people might want to save onto their computers. This method will optimise file size a little bigger, but keep quality intact!

Optimize image file names

When it comes to optimising your images for SEO purposes you want them all to have descriptive filenames that accurately describe what is on each of your photos. If someone searches for “blue chairs” in Google Images and comes across a picture of your chairs, they won’t click on it because the image file name is “Jesse’s Chair” rather than “Blue Chairs” and anything is better than “IMG_5932”.

Make sure your image filenames are in lowercase letters, without any numbers or symbols (unless it’s part of the file name).

Choose unique images

You can’t just use any image out there. Every image has a different license and you need to understand which images you can use and which you can’t. You don’t want to breach copyrights. Find out which images you can use here!

Add Images to your sitemap

While this is not necessary, it’s a good idea to optimise the indexing of your site by adding all relevant image files into your XML Sitemap. This will help Google find and correctly rank these pages within their search engine results pages (SERPs).

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