If we consider some of our favourite social media activities – visual content outranks text based content time and time again. This is evident in the steady rise in popularity of sites such as Instagram, Pinterest and Slideshare. Studies tell us that Facebook users will engage at a higher rate with image posts. Let’s not even get started on the infographic phenomenon that took marketers by storm in recent years and still features as a well-received content format.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that at least 10% of Google searches are image based. While it may seem like a low percentage, at even 10% that is still a load of searches! Whether you’re marketing microphones or microwaves, teddy bears or take-aways, sofas or software, you can be sure that a good-quality image result in a search is going to catch the attention of your searcher. So with that in mind, let’s look at a few suggestions on optimising your images for inclusion in search engine results.
How To Optimise Images for Search
1. Stick to Google’s Indexable File Types
Google can index image types formatted as BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG and WebP, as well as SVG. This pretty much covers the gamut of mainstream image types.
2. Spell it Out
Google spiders are not able to ‘see’ and decipher images like we can with our eyes. They rely on text to help them figure it out. Here are the text based optimisation areas to consider when it comes to images:
- File Name: Don’t be tempted to default to “image1.jpeg” or even worse something like “1000088887-876627282.887272.jpeg”. This is non-descript and - apart from making it really difficult for you to manage your website files easily - makes it next to impossible for spiders to work out what the hang your picture is about. Name your images with keywords and content in mind. Something like, “labrador-puppies-playing.jpg”, is a far more indicative and paints a clearer picture (excuse the pun) of the image content.
- Alt Text: This is an opportunity to describe what spiders may expect to see if they were able to ‘look’ at the image. Using our “labrador-puppies-playing.jpg” example, an appropriate alt text attribute could be: alt=”Labrador puppies playing with kittens”
- Titles and Captions: Titles and image captions can offer you another area to describe what it is the user is looking at. Be careful at this point of keyword stuffing though. Captions can be longer, more descriptive than alt text and obviously benefit the user before the search engine spider.
- HTML Copy: Google also looks at the textual content around the image for clues on content. Refer to your image in your copy, as close to the image as possible and using the same or similar keywords as used in the file name, alt text, titles and captions.
- Anchor Text: Linking to your image from another source or page? Be sure your anchor text is relevant and descriptive, clearly indicating to users what they can expect in the destination link. This not only adds to user experience, but anchor text is another HTML based element that Google considers when indexing content.
3. Submit an Image Sitemap
You’ll need your web developer to help you out with this one, but essentially you submit an image sitemap to Google that helps them discover relevant or important images from your site. The image sitemap also contains markup for the URL of the image, caption, title and geographical location. Not all tags are required but the more information you can supply the more chance that Google will be able to index your image correctly.