Optimizing images may seem like a throw-away when it comes to your overall SEO strategies and implementations. But two major ranking factors make it more important than you think.
Ranking Factor: Image Alt Data
What is your image alt data? It is the text that will appear on the screen if your image doesn’t load, for whatever reason. It is EXTREMELY important for two reasons:
- Alt data optimization allows your photos and graphics to be indexed. This, in turn, has the potential to drive more traffic to your site and helps your site rank for the keywords used in the text assigned to the alt data.
- For your page to be considered accessibility compliant, a screen reader can read the text to describe a graphic/photo for the seeing impaired.
Ranking Factor: Site Speed
As we’ve noted in the past, the load speed of a website became a ranking factor back in 2018. One of the most common elements of a website to slow down its load speed is its images. Two things you can do to keep that from happening to you.
- Use fewer images. The shear number of images on a page can tank a site’s load speed…FAST.
- Pay attention to image size. If you’re going to use a 640px x 423px image on your site, don’t load a 1920px x 1271px image to the backend of your site. The search engines read the larger size, no matter what size shows on the page. Similarly, before you load the image to the backend of your site, scale it to 72dpi rather than 300. The higher dpi is needed for PRINTING, not for rendering well on a screen. However, the higher dpi increases the image size exponentially, slowing down the loading of the site.
Need help with your image optimization as part of your overall on-page SEO strategy? Use the button below to give us a shout, and let’s see if we’re a good fit for your project!
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay