How To Optimize Blog Images For SEO & High Search Engine Rankings 2024

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Images on a blog can be used in many ways, and optimizing them for search engines is one of the most important uses. When you optimize your images for search engines, it means that you make it easier for people to find your website by using relevant keywords. This results in more traffic to your site which will ultimately lead to more conversions. 

In order to optimize an image for SEO purposes, there are certain things that need to be done such as: adding alt tags with keywords, writing unique titles and descriptions (which is very similar but not quite the same as meta tags), placing images near the beginning of posts since they are among some of the first things Google crawls when indexing a page. We’ll talk about each step below!

Images are considered text by the Google algorithm and can help your site rank higher in search results. Search engines crawl through websites looking at content and keywords to determine relevancy of that website towards a particular keyword or phrase.

Optimizing blog images is an easy way to increase the relevancy of your site. By optimizing images, it allows more opportunities for engagement with users because they could see your image on social media sites such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter etc..which increases traffic flow towards your website! 

Bloggers often overlook the importance of images in blog posts. Many bloggers assume that people only come to read their content, but this is simply not true. In fact, Google uses information from images as a ranking factor for your post. If you want to optimize your blog posts and increase page views, then you should start using more compelling images in your posts. 

What is High Search Engine Rankings?

How To Optimize Blog Images For SEO
image credit- Pixabay

In order to answer this question you have to ask yourself a few questions first, Why do you want them to be high and what makes a website rank high in the searches.

There are a lot of factors that come into play when a person or business wants their website to appear at the top of search engines for their targeted key terms.

One of the most common ways to get your site ranked high is to use optimized text with keywords that relate to what you are trying to promote or sell on your site.

The reason this helps web designers and business owners is that search engines use analytics that includes keywords, backlinks, social media presence/popularity, and so on to determine whether or not your website should be ranked high.

It is important that you have all of the correct information for your site because if it doesn’t appear in the top 10 results then people aren’t going to see it and therefore you won’t make any money.

High search engine rankings are what we strive for as web designers and business owners, but before all of that can happen there are two important elements to first understand.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the first thing you’ll need to use in order to ensure your website appears high on searches for relevant phrases. SEO can be a difficult process to get everything right ,but there are many articles on the subject of getting your site high in the rankings.

seo
image credit- Pixabay

The second thing is image optimization, this article will go over how to optimize images for search engine rankings.

Optimizing images for search engines is very easy but if you aren’t aware of what you are doing then you most likely won’t get any good results.

There are tools like Google image search that can help you determine if your site is ranking high for your targeted keywords, but the point of this article isn’t to teach how to use this tool, instead, it teaches what not to do with your images when trying to optimize them for search engines. 

You would think that the best way to get your site ranked high is to have images on your page that are of relevant things, but this isn’t the case.

Google image search doesn’t care if you have pictures of kittens or cats on your website, it just cares about the file name of the images being used. The keywords in the file name are what carry the most weight.

If you have an image on your page with a file name of “image1”, then that image has no relevant keywords which means it will never get ranked for anything. The more descriptive the file names are, the higher chance you have of getting them to rank high in Google Image Search for relevant keywords.

Steps to Optimize Blog Images For High Search Engine Rankings-

Blogs and SEO go together like peanut butter and jelly. Optimizing your images will help you to increase your rankings, and improve the experience for viewers on your blog.

Images that are optimized for both search engines and reader engagement will result in an increased organic traffic rate as well as better user engagement rates for new visitors to your blog.

Since search engines like Google are crawling through your images, you will want to make sure that they contain the proper title and alt tags that would direct both human’s and search engine bots’ attention on what’s inside.

The reason for this guide is to help new bloggers who are beginning their first blog design understand how important it is to create an optimized blog for blogging SEO.

Why Optimize Blog Images? 

How To Optimize Blog Images For SEO - Optimize Blog Images
image credit- Pixabay

A large part of the total time spent on a site is actually spent reading and viewing content. Converting this into revenue is essential to any company’s success in achieving its business goals and objectives. Sites that don’t use images can lose traffic and conversions, and suffer in search engine rankings.

Images are not just nice to have on a site, they are essential for conversions. Images help communicate the message of the content in an easy-to-understand context.

You should optimize your images because it will make your website presentable to both search engines and viewers alike while optimizing it can also be used as an extra and tell the story. In fact, images are 23 times more likely to be rated as “very important” to a successful online transaction by consumers.

There are four main reasons why you should optimize your blog for images:

Rank better in search engines,

Improve user engagement,

Increase click-through rates and conversions,

help users find what they need

  1. Use the ALT tag to tell search engines what your image is about, For example: <img src=”Kanye West” alt=”kanye west face”> tells search engines that you are talking about kanye west’s face.
  2. Create a blog post title that is relevant to your blog post or page and is optimized for SEO.
  3. Add a focus keyword to the end of your post titles. For example: <img src=”Kanye West” alt=”kanye west face”> would be better as <img src=”Kanye West” alt=”kanye west face hip hop “>
  4. Use more images with keywords to expand the information on your blog rather than just plain text
  5. Never neglect small images like watermarks, logos or badges as they are usually what is shared more frequently on social media sites; therefore; it will help with generating traffic for your site… if done properly
  6. Add alt tags to all of your images that are relevant to the blog post to help improve SEO
  7. Use keywords in file names, not just alt tags or titles. <img src=”kanye west face” alt=”kanye west face”> would be better as <img src=”kanye-west-face.jpg” alt=”Kanye West Face”>
  8. Experiment with image sizes that are optimized for your blog to increase click-through rates and conversions.
  9. Think about how users will be using the images on your blog post before you upload them so you can optimize the file name for user engagement and search engine optimization. For example, if you put a big image of Kanye West on your blog, someone might search for Kanye West or maybe even “kanye west face” to learn more about him. Optimizing the file name of the image will help others find it when they are searching for more information on him.
  10. Don’t make them too small as this doesn’t help with SEO and user engagement because they can’t see what is so important about the image.

 

How to Optimize Blog Images For High Search Engine Rankings-

Do you want to rank higher on your favorite search engine? You can do it by optimizing your images. Search engines and visitors find and recognize images and pictures more easily than text (keywords). If you want to increase the Google ranking of your site, optimize images.

Choose a name for the image file that people will be able to remember. The search engine robots do not look at the filename technically but they read its name to relate it with a certain subject.

ranking
Image credit- iStock

When you name an image, keep in mind that people will have to be able to know what the image is about just from its name. For example, if your site’s topic is flowers then instead of naming your image flower.jpg you can name it white hazel-roses-in-the-garden.jpg.

In the image file’s HTML tag, write a short and meaningful description of the picture in addition to the image’s filename and its alt attribute. This will help you in two ways. First, it will help search engines understand what your image is about.

Second, if the visitor cannot see the image for any reason (maybe their machine has no graphics capability or maybe they have turned this option off in their browser), the description and filename will be displayed instead of the picture (you can also use text-based navigation to provide access to the pictures).

In the HTML tag, add a keyword you want your page to rank for. This will help search engines understand what your image is about too.

The good thing with an image’s name is that it can have more than one word which makes it easier to get a higher ranking compared with a text’s name which can have only one word.

Use your website’s colors in the image. This will not help you get a higher ranking but it will make your page look better. People are attracted to what they see, hear and feel so if an image looks good to them, they might want to know more about it.

Add some text to your pictures. This will help people understand what the picture is about more clearly. You can also include a link in the text so if the visitors click on it they will be redirected to another related website.

If you have taken a picture, choose one of its corners and write your site’s name or tag line there. You can also create your own logo to be used in the picture’s corner. That way, when users click on the picture they will go to another page where they can find more information about you and your site.

Add a caption under the picture for more information about it. This will also help people understand what the picture is about.

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Conclusion- How To Optimize Blog Images For SEO & High Search Engine Rankings 2024

This blog post has been a brief introduction to optimizing images for high search engine rankings. We have given you the necessary information about how to optimize your photos and what type of content is most likely going to rank well in Google’s SERPS.

If this article has sparked an interest in learning more, we recommend taking some time out from being a blogger yourself and reading through our other posts on SEO best practices!

For example, read “How To Optimize Your Blog In 10 Minutes” or find out “The Ultimate Guide To Increasing Organic Traffic.”  The world awaits with open arms–get blogging!

Jitendra Vaswani

Jitendra Vaswani is the founder of SchemaNinja WordPress Plugin, prior to SchemaNinja he is the founder of big internet marketing blog BloggersIdeas.com & Digital Marketing Agency DigiExe. During his more than 6+yrs long expertise in Digital Marketing, Jitendra has been a marketing consultant, trainer, speaker, and author of “Inside A Hustler’s Brain: In Pursuit of Financial Freedom” which has sold over 20,000 copies, worldwide. He has trained 3000+ digital marketing professionals to date and has been conducting Digital marketing workshops across the globe for 5+ yrs. His ultimate goal is to help people build businesses through digitization and make them realize that dreams do come true if you stay driven. Check out his newly acquired websites Imagestation, and Newsmartwave

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