12 Tips for Image Optimization in 2022

1. Set up your SEO framework to include images from day one

Whether you’re creating marketing campaigns or putting together a new website, it’s important to assume that your customers want to see good images. It can be easy to fall into a trap of thinking about text as more important than images overall but assuming that will do a disservice to both visitors and search engines looking for those pages.

2. Use descriptive file names for your image filenames

The name you give an image is not only helpful information for people who are looking at the file name, it’s also an important piece of information for search engines. Because of how Google indexes websites, the keywords in a file name can impact where your image shows up on a page or even whether it appears at all.

3. Create compelling alt text and filenames for your images

Alt-text is not only essential to accessibility efforts but there is a direct correlation between its effectiveness and bringing people back to a website. Having good alt text that accurately describes the image is critical to driving traffic from Google Image Search as well as understanding what someone should expect when they click on an image thumbnail from another page.

4. Use Title attributes for your input tags as well

Including “title” as one of the attributes for input tags is the most overlooked way of adding additional search engine value to an image. Adding title attributes not only can help your images appear in different places throughout Google, but it also helps people better understand what they’re looking at when they see that image elsewhere.

5. Optimize your images for mobile devices

Since more and more people are using mobile devices to access the Internet, optimizing images for performance on smaller screens is critical for both visual appearances as well as making sure your pages load quickly. There are a number of plugins available that allow you to do automatic resizing based on screen size, allowing each image size to fit within its design elements.

6. Use SVG files whenever possible

As the web continues moving toward rich graphical experiences, the use of Vector Graphics is becoming more important. SVG files offer an XML-based image format that provides crisp images at any resolution, allowing them to be resized on the fly without losing quality. Additionally, they are supported on most modern browsers (with IE lagging far behind), which means you can drop support for older browsers and load only what you need based on screen size or browser capability.

7. Include a photo title attribute if possible

No matter how good your alt text is, it’s really only used when images fail to load for some reason. If you have a strong title element associated with all your photos, however, you can drive more traffic from Google Image Search as well as understand the motive behind the photo better.

8. Use responsive images when appropriate

Responsive images are nothing more than resized versions of your original image that allow you to define what performs best on any device based on screen size or capability. Rather than just displaying an image at a specific dimension, these HTML5-based solutions automatically scale images down without losing quality to ensure they’re still attractive and easy to access.

9. Establish a naming convention for all images used in campaigns

Not only is having some form of naming structure helpful for keeping your files organized properly, but it also helps people find exactly what they’re looking for faster while improving how well your site’s pages load overall. It also works directly with the file name, ensuring any alt text you use is based on the file name rather than just being something arbitrary.

10. Create additional image folders for related images

There are times when it makes sense to have large numbers of files associated with each other (such as an entire set related to a specific topic), which means having some kind of organizational structure other than simply using parent folders can be helpful. For example, if you wanted to download the individual images from the 12 Tips article, you could go into “12-tips” and pull out all the files while maintaining their connections without needing to search through multiple pages looking for them.

11. Use structured data markup for local business photos

Having your local business photos show up in Google Maps is important, and while simply uploading photos to Google+ Local is the best way to get them indexed in a timely manner, you can take it a step further by using structured data markup. Using this approach allows your business profile photo to appear in search engines without having to wait for Google’s crawling process and gives you even more visibility in the SERPs.

12. Use ALT text on images included via @import rule

If you’re using CSS preprocessors such as LESS or SASS, one of the best ways of speeding up front-end development is to include relevant images directly from code by adding an @import statement within a style sheet. Unfortunately, these images won’t get alt text automatically set through this method, so using them without adding that text can produce less-than-ideal results.

It’s difficult to know when and where Google will decide to pick up your images, but by following these best practices you can ensure your efforts will pay off in the long run and give you a better chance of appearing higher in image searches sooner than later.