SEO | 4 Killer Tips to Optimize Your Use of Images

Photos and images inside your blog/blog posts plays an important role. Aside from breaking up your article, it also makes your post more interesting and readable as stated in my previous post about that. But there is another truth behind images. You can optimize them for better SEO ranking. How? Here are some tips in optimizing you use of it.

1. In naming your images, use a brief but descriptive filenames and alt text.
Generic. You should really avoid using generic filenames. Don't use filenames like "image.jpg", "pic.gif", "Image999.png" or any related. Before uploading them on your web host or to any online directories, change the filename into something relevant to what the image really shows.

Aside form that, use a brief filename instead of lengthy one. You should also take advantage of the image "alt" attribute. It allows you to specify alternative text for the image if ever your browser can't load the picture for some reasons.

Check this example:
<img src="http://www.rickspot.com/images/monkey-with-laptop.jpg" alt="Rickspot Header" />
The content of the "alt" attribute provides information about the picture.

Output:

The image wasn't displayed for some reason, but at least the "alt" text was.

Note: Avoid stuffing a lot of irrelevant keywords into the "alt" text. (Don't spam.)

2. When using images as links, don't forget to supply the "alt" text.
In tip #1, we understand what an "alt" text is. Now, if you decide to use an image as a link, using the "alt" attribute again will help Search Engines understand more about the page you're linking to. Consider writing "alt" text for images as creating anchor text for a text link.

Note: Although images really looks good to our eyes, text links are still the best for SEO. Too much images can slow down the page load-time of your blog/website.

3. Store your images on a directory of their own.
Blogspot users doesn't have problems with this because Picasa web albums creates different albums for all of your blog. On the other hand, self-hosted Wordpress blogs has its own directory for anything that you upload.

Whatever the situation is, make it a habit to store images in its own directory.

4. Use commonly supported image filetypes.
If you want you images be viewed on most common browsers, you should always use the most common filetypes. It includes jpeg (Joint Photographic Experts Group), gif (Graphics Interchange Format), png (Portable Network Graphics) or bmp (Bitmap).

Bonus Tip. Convert your images to visitor.
Really? Is that possible? To make it possible, subscribe to this blog because I'll be posting about it soon. That's all.

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