By Cary Grant 
Businesses, generally, focus on content and website optimization for SEO, but what rarely gets talked about is image optimization. This is why we have decided to talk about the reason why image optimization is important for your SEO and how to best utilize it. So, let’s get started.
Why is Image Optimization Important for a Good SEO?
Companies, freelancers, and individuals alike are trying to reach the best possible SEO they can. It’s not a secret that it is a complicated process, as it requires every single bit of your website to be optimized for it. SEO can have outstanding results for your publicity, and that is why people strive to be ranked as high as humanly possible on the search engine results page.
When people try to optimize this, they will focus mostly on the title, header, and body content. While these are important aspects of SEO, they aren’t the only ones… Optimizing your images for SEO works a bit differently than with regular content. You want your image to be as small as possible without reducing the quality of the image for your page load time to remain low. Successful optimization means that the image of the product/service will also rank fairly high on Google, resulting in a boost in traffic to your website.
1. Resize the Image
A common thing that many people get wrong is that they think image size and file size are the same things. The size of the image refers to its dimensions (for example, 2400 pixels by 1600 pixels), while the file size refers to the storage space necessary for the image (for example, 1000 kilobytes). Images that take up too much space will slow down the loading time of the page significantly. This is why we mentioned previously that you need to maintain the quality of the image as much as possible while also reducing the size of the image as much as possible. If a user can’t load your page fast enough, it will not only destimulate them from seeing what you have to offer (keep in mind that studies have shown that an outstanding 52% of internet users will leave a website if it hasn’t loaded for 6 seconds!), but it will also rank you far lower in the search engine results page. While you want the quality to be as high as possible for printed materials, you shouldn’t approach digital images with the same mindset.
We recommend that you experiment with compression rates to find a good balance between file size and image quality. You can use Photoshop to edit the images. The option that comes in useful is “save for the web”, as it minimizes the file size while still optimizing the quality of the image.
2. Use Original and Unique Images
It goes without saying that your search ranking will perform much better if your image stands out above the rest in terms of uniqueness. Using stock images is understandable and can sometimes be appropriate, but it is, generally, a rule of thumb to always go with original images. This is because it is very likely that if you find an image attractive, so will other websites. You have to treat the image you choose as a well-crafted ad, the more it stands out, the better your odds are of reaching your goal (in our case, better SEO).
3. Make Sure That the Image is Mobile-Friendly
While it is assumed that most people and their grandmas know that they need to make a website mobile-friendly, it is still worth giving a shoutout to this, as we simply can’t stress enough how vital it is for the success of your overall SEO. You need to make sure that the image/s you will use is/are responsive to the user’s device. These days, setting this up is easier than setting up your own wi-fi network, so no need to worry about the complexity of it. There are more and more website templates that automatically resize images based on the width of the device.
4. Captions are Your Friends
Image captions are rarely the focus of even those who try to optimize images, but it is more relevant than you would think. An image caption is a word or sentence directly below the image in question. Unlike the file name, the image caption is visible for everyone to see. Believe it or not but image captions also influence the image SEO, as it improves the user experience and the engagement metrics. Image captions fall under one of the things that people scan when they view a web page they are seeing for the first time. Captions for an image are read far more often than you would expect, but this does not mean that you should write captions under every image just to boost readability, as it will backfire easily. A quality SEO agency from Sydney will highlight just how much a good image caption can impact the visibility of your website.
5. Spread Your Images Around the Web
As with any regular links, spreading your images will inevitably lead to more traffic. The ranking of images in the search engine results page is heavily influenced by link-building. Simply put, the more authority links that your site has, the higher the chances are of you appearing at the top of the search results. With this said, you should strive to have as many people as possible see the images that you put out on your website. This is another good side effect of using original images, as there will be no overlapping or competition over the image in question, it is yours and yours alone. Besides, think of this from a rational perspective, would it be easier to share a block of text with a friend or a simple image? Exactly. Share the image you are optimizing through social media, emails, blogs, etc. to get the highest possible outreach.
In order to truly optimize your website for SEO, you need to take into account the images you are going to use. They are a vital component of how well you will perform against your competition. Hopefully, reading this article has made you realize just how much you can utilize image optimization. Till next time!