SEO Tips for Images & Image-Based Websites

An image-based website is not SEO friendly. In fact, the only thing that is less SEO friendly is a Flash website. The search engines like text, but there is less room for text on an image advert. That is why you need to pay extra attention to your SEO. You may be able to afford to miss things out with a text-based website, but you have no such luxury with image-based websites. Here are some tips that will help you to make your image based site more search engine friendly.

You should try a few editing tools

There are a few online tools that will allow you to edit your tools. If you are looking to make your images better looking, or to Photoshop them, then you should use a piece of software that is loaded onto a powerful PC. If however, you are looking to optimize your images so that they are more search engine friendly, then you could do far worse than trying a few online tools.

Using such tools may help you to lower the resolution of your images. They may be used to change the file format to one that does not need as much memory, and to resize images to one that is better suited to your website.

Create a balance between usability and file size

The bigger the file, then the clearer the image (usually). If you lower the resolution then the image may be big, but the file size would be reduced. A lower file size is going to be better for your SEO, but it is pointless if your image is of a poor/moderate quality. So why not resize the image instead. Does your image really need to be as big as it is? Or, can you reduce the size of the image and still maintain usably and website quality? This is the balance that you must strike.

Change the file type to one that is more suitable

As you may know, some file types will create larger files than others. If two images are the same size, but one is a JPEG and the other is BMP, then the JPEG is going to use less bytes, and will therefore have a smaller file size. The JPEG may not as high quality as the BMP, but the difference is not going to be noticed by many online users.

Consider GIF files, which are not of a very high resolution and smaller images can be of a very poor quality. But, the images have a very small file size, when compared to other file formats with the same image size. They are also ideal for creating animations and graphics.

Many people use JPEG files on their websites because the files are often very small when compared to other images of the same size. Many people use them for photographs because they do not distort very much.

Try creating an image site map

This is similar to a sitemap for your website, but instead will point to the images on your website. It is not going to make the search engines rush out to index your images, but it will add a little bit more information for the search engines to key into. When you create your links, make sure that you use relevant keywords (if you can). And, try to use a keyword from the image’s ALT tag and title.

Add text to the ALT tag

The ALT tag holds information that tells the viewer what the image should be. It appears if your image does not load. Add a short description of the image to the ALT tag, and try to add a keyword or two into the tag. The search engines use this information in order to index the image. You must not stuff keywords into the ALT text; you must add a description that may be read by humans.

Correctly name your image files

Name them a descriptive name that accurately describes the image, and do this before you upload the image. That way it will appear on the server as a descriptive name, and will appear that way if a user saves or downloads the image. The descriptive file name may be used by the search engines to better index your image.

Post By:
Korah Morrison, writer on College-Paper.org that helps students achieve their academic goals.