How To Optimize Images On The Site.

How To Optimize Images On The Site. The Most Important Thing.No matter how high-quality the text is and no matter how useful the product you are promoting, getting on a page without pictures, the user instantly loses interest in it.

Our brain perceives visual information best. Sites in this case are no exception. The vibrant images on the page are instantly striking. They determine how the visitor will rate your site and how well they will remember it. And vice versa: no matter how high-quality the text is and no matter how useful the product you are promoting, getting on a page without pictures, the user instantly loses interest in it.

 

Search engines also value unique and well-designed graphic content – image optimization can improve your site’s ranking and attract more visitors to it. Competent work with pictures is necessary for any site. But if you are promoting the services of a design bureau, wedding photographer, online store, or any other resource with a dominant graphic component, Image SEO simply has to become the main tool for interacting with search engines and visitors.

Why optimize images

First of all, correctly selected images influence behavioral factors. When opening a page, a person quickly “scans” its content – attractive pictures along with a system of subheadings help to catch the eye and decide whether to get acquainted with the content in more detail. At the same time, it is important that the images are relevant, informative, and load quickly.

Just uploading an image to the site is not enough. It is necessary to make sure that search engines recognize what is depicted on them and respond to the corresponding user queries. Image optimization has exactly these goals. Another aspect of optimization is to make the images as accessible as possible on all types of devices. They should display equally well and not slow down page loading. To do this, you need to choose the right format and compress the picture to the desired size without losing quality.

What format images to use

The slower the images load, the more likely it is that the visitor will close the page without reading its content. Search engines closely monitor user behavior – sites with a high bounce rate lose their positions in the search results. To prevent this from happening, you need to decide on the format – this will allow you to achieve the optimal combination of weight and image quality:

 

•       JPG / JPEG is the best resolution for detailed photos, screenshots, illustrations with gradients and shadows;
•       PNG – suitable for small images with transparent backgrounds: logos, buttons, icons, and other design elements. Due to the large weight of the files, it is used quite rarely – for reproductions of paintings, copyright photos, etc.;
•       GIF is a format for logos, animated images, and dynamic advertising banners. Adds dynamics to images at the expense of quality;
•       SVG – allows you to place vector images: logo, background, buttons, maps, diagrams, and pictures for responsive sites;
•       Webp is an alternative format from Google. Allows to significantly reduce file size with minimal loss of quality. Requires special converters and is not supported by all browsers.

To reduce the size of the graphic file, you can use special compressors:  Tiny PNG, image compressor, Iloveimg, IMGonline, etc. They allow you to imperceptibly for the human eye to reduce the number of shades – and thereby the number of bits for their encoding, remove unnecessary metadata, scale the photo and increase its uniqueness …

7 techniques for optimizing images on a page

1. The name of the files allows the search engine to identify your picture. It should be as relevant and comprehensive as possible – no abstractions or a random set of characters. The file name is written in Latin letters. For automatic transliteration of pictures in Russian, you can use the following plugins: Clarify Pro, Clarify, Cyr To Lat, etc. All spaces in long names are replaced with hyphens or underscores. If we are talking about an online store, you should definitely indicate the name of a specific product model, and not be limited to its category or brand. For example, the name of a smartphone for an online technology store should be written as follows: “Xiaomi-redmi-note-7-4-64gb-black.jpg”.

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2. Attributes ALT and Title act as hints regarding the content of the image for both search engines and users.

ALT is an alternative text that will be visible even if the picture is not loaded. The text should fit in 150 characters, including spaces, be informative and contain keywords.

The title is displayed when you hover over the image. It should convey the meaning of the picture as succinctly as possible and differ from the ALT attribute. You can make sure that the ALT and Title attributes are registered for all images on the site using Seo Screaming Frog, Netpeak Spider, and other automated solutions.

3. The address of the image should be interconnected with the name of the image and be easily readable by the user. Such a URL has a positive impact on rankings;
4. The correct storage hierarchy will avoid confusion in a large number of images. Create several folders on the server based on categories and distribute images between them. Keep images on your domain or subdomain and not on third party image repositories.
5. Sitemap analysis will be an additional advantage for ranking. You can check if the images are indexed correctly, and search robots can even detect those images that would otherwise remain out of their field of vision (for example, using JavaScript). You can create an XML file for images separately or update an existing general sitemap.
6. Micro-markup does not require the creation of additional files and is implemented using tags written in the page code. The semantic dictionaries Schema.org and OpenGraph will help you with this. Pay special attention to the Width and Height parameters. Correct markup will make images more attractive when reposting material on social networks, and will also allow products from the catalog and video splash images to appear on the main page of search results.
7. The uniqueness of the images also affects ranking. It is better to use the author’s content – a real photo or design object will be the best illustrations for your site. You can customize your stock photos using filters, Canva’s geometric layouts, or simply changing orientation and geometry in a photo editor.

Visual content plays an increasingly important role in the promotion of media products. Proper SEO image optimization will help you win the battle for traffic and increase the attractiveness of your site. Remember that the graphic component should complement the general theme of the page – to illustrate the text material and provide additional informational value.