In SEO, that blind spot is often the use of imagery.
Even top class SEOs don’t give imagery for SEO its fair share of column space. It’s not examined enough, and often underutilized, which means it’s a powerful opportunity to give your website the advantage it needs and you want.
How Images Affect SERPs
You’re probably wondering – how do images impact search results and how do they increase the probability of people finding your site?1. Universal Search Concept
In recent times, thanks to the universal search concept, Google is far more inclined to add imagery to its main results page. In fact, in a lot of cases, images are shown at the very top of the page, which of course is where any website wants to be. In addition, unlike traditional text-based results, images stand out and as such are more likely to catch the eye.2. Human Level
Humans use Google’s SERPs and images make an impact at that level. To some extent, searching is about user experience and Kasy Allen on
Moz summed the relationship between imagery and SEO well, when she
discussed the way she and her husband search. People eat with their eyes
as well as their stomachs. So, when looking for a recipe, she validly
points out that she’d want to find the tastiest looking dish. In turn,
she mentions when she does a search, she scans the images to find one
she likes the look of and then clicks through to that particular recipe.
She also uses an example of how her husband uses Google images when
looking for instructions, claiming he prefers the visual option over the
text-based alternatives.
Neither Kasy nor her husband would have found the particular results they did if they hadn’t been optimized with images.
Images and Social Media
Images also have an immense impact on social media and are known to greatly increase click-through rates among users. According to a study by Kissmetrics, using images on Twitter resulted in a 19 percent higher CTR and 150 percent more retweets. Appealing, high quality images also have a positive impact on Facebook Ad CTRs too. So, it could be said that high-quality, well-optimized images tend to have an encouraging impact on a variety of channels.There’s plenty of science to suggest that searchers and readers are almost hardwired to prefer content with images rather than without. Dual-coding theory suggests that human memory can retain both verbal and image-based information, but that images are encoded in memory in a more concrete way and so have a longer-lasting impact on us as consumers.
So, taking all this into account, how do you go about optimizing your images for search results?
There are three areas to consider when making improvements to images for SEO.
- On-picture
- On-page
- Off-page
On-Picture Ranking Factors
These are things that need to be done to the image before it’s uploaded. Needless to say, always ensure your images are top quality, attractive, and eye-catching. Aside from this, you should also ensure the following:- Images should be between 320 and 1280 pixels in size.
- Normal formatting sizes are best – so ensure you keep between 4:3 and 16:10 in size.
- Add a suitable file name to the image; i.e. red-car.jpg. Generally the file name should be no more than 4-6 words and a description of the image.
- Include a copyright notice – this doesn’t impact SEO, but is a good practice.
- Compress images to around 60-80 percent of the original size and keep file sizes below 400kb. The JPEG compression format is suitable here.
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