SEO For Images

Using the available SEO options for your images is just as important as using SEO in your text content. Images are still content and there will always be a percentage of visitors who land on you website through an image search.

Image Titles & Naming

Images have both Advisory Titles and ALT Text which are used to describe the image to both search engines and visitors alike. Your images should also have meaningful names which will also assist with SEO.

Advisory Titles

When you visit a website and see an image, if you move you mouse and hover over the image the description you see is the Advisory Title. This is a great place to describe your image and use appropriate key words. If we consider that this image might be a product image you could use the Title Text like this: "Grey Cargo Mens Pants - Anti-Crease - Sizes XS-XXL". This way we have used our keywords and consicely described the image without trying to stuff keywords into the description or incorrectly describing the image.

ALT Text

ALT text are used to give search engines a readable description of what you image represents allowing your images to benefit from the robots who are indexing your website as well. They are also used for  visually impaired users. A screen reader will read out the ALT text to the user in place of the image. ALT text will also be displayed in the case where your image can't be loaded for some reason.

ALT Text give the search engines a further point of relevance helping them to index both your image and page properly. If you H1 tag, your first paragraph and your image tags are all consistent in the subject matter, Google will consider your webpage more relevant. Imaging having a category listing page with 12 images that have no ALT Text or Advisory Titles? That is 24 different chances to attract website visitors you aren't using.

Image Names:

Naming your images with meaningful titles is a great first step. As you can imagine IMG00587.jpg doesn't have the impact that StrawberryToppedChocolateCupCake.jpg has. It is difficult to estimate how much of the image name is a factor in Googles ranking, however it is a factor and its easier to do this before upload than to try and edit file names in the console.

Step 1: - Give Your Images Meaningful Names

• Collect all the images you mean to use on your website and group them all in a folder.
• One by One move through the images (in File Explorer), clicking once to highlight the image, wait a second and then click again and you will see you can now overwrite the image name.
• Give your image a meaningful name.
• Try to avoid the 01, 02, 03 extensions at the end of your file name. If you have three pics of chocolate cup cakes consider naming them all slightly differently. IE: "chocolatecupcake.jpg" + "HandmadeChocolateCupcake.jpg" + "StrawberryToppedChocolateCupcake.jpg"

Step 2: - Adding Titles and ALT Text

• Login to your account on the Web Console.
• Go to Image and File Manager (left menu)
• Click Upload A New File.
• Click "Upload a file" button. You can select multiple images here.
• Choose your resize option (don't resize if you have already minimised your image size) and upload the image.
• NB: You image is now in the Image and File Manager however we don't add the Title and ALT text here - these are added when you add the image to your website page.
• Go to Manage Pages | Content Pages and select the page you would like to add your image to and click Edit
• Drag the image item on to your page. (If you do not have a section in this page you will have to add a section first)
• Browse your image library and find your image.
• Now that your image is on the page click the edit button to add the Titles and Text
• 
• You will now see the fields you need to add your text to.
• Add your title description and Alt Text in the appropriate fields and save and close.
• 

NB: Remember your ALT text should read as an accurate description of your image for visually impaired users.

Step 3: If you have more time....

Work your way through your website pages and check if all your existing images have the Title and Alt text completed. It's a big job but it will be worth it.