SEO for Images: Best Practices for Including Images in Blog Posts
A properly sized blog post image is very important when talking about SEO. An improperly sized image (height and width) will greatly affect SEO and user experience, particularly in the eyes of search bots crawling your site.
If you can't determine the accurate dimensions of your blog post image, there are several online tools that can assist in running audits on the website.
Before I continue, let me give a brief insight into what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is all about. SEO involves optimizing a website and its content to generate organic traffic from search engines.
Although mastering SEO is not an easy task, it is worth the effort. Remember, without good SEO practices, you will struggle with your website's visibility.
In other words, you can analyze your website's overall performance using Google Search Console.
Google Analytics is also a great tool for site performance audits. To check your site performance using Google Analytics, follow these steps:
- Go to Google Analytics.
- Click on Behavior in the left menu under the Acquisition tab.
- Click on Site Speed.
- Finally, click on Speed Suggestions to analyze a specific URL.
Best SEO Practices for Blog Post Images
- Avoid using copyrighted images.
- Ensure to use properly sized images.
- Images should be relevant to the content.
- Use factual and descriptive images.
- Include keywords in the image Alt text.
- Include keywords in the image Title text.
Avoid Using Copyrighted Images
To optimize your blog and rank well, avoid using copyrighted images in your posts. Copyrighted images are those downloaded from other websites. Always use unique and unplagiarized images. Customize images for your site and include a watermark to show ownership.
Ensure to Use Properly Sized Images
Using properly sized images improves page load speed. The ideal loading time for a page is usually less than two seconds. Poor image resolution, dimensions, and sizes can greatly affect performance, increasing load times and irritating visitors.
Properly sized images impact SEO directly. Page load speed influences SERP rankings, which is the goal of every blogger. An optimized image can help increase conversion rates, gain quality backlinks, generate organic traffic, and improve content engagement.
Always ensure to upload light images with clear resolution, ideally less than 1MB. Heavy images (over 150KB) may not rank well. For optimal SEO, aim for image sizes between 40-50KB or less.
To optimize your images for SEO, consider using tools like Google Search Console Lighthouse to identify images with large dimensions. Also, use WEBP, PNG, JPG, or JPEG formats to minimize images and improve load speeds.
Images Should Be Related to Content
The quality of an image depends on its relevance to the content. An image may have high resolution and proper sizing, but if it doesn't support the information in the blog post, it will have little impact.
Factual and Descriptive Images
Always include metadata descriptions for your blog post images, including Alt text and Image title text.
Use Keywords in the Image Alt Text
When writing image alt text, ensure to include the focus keywords from the article. This helps image bots assess and crawl your images for display in search results.
Use Keywords in the Image Title Text
Similarly, include keywords in the image title text and make it catchy to attract web users. Avoid clickbait; misleading titles may attract visitors, but they won't return.
