SEO isn't just about words, it is about optimising every part of your website. Here's an easy guide on how to optimise your images for SEO. Follow these steps and don't let unoptimised images drag your site down the rankings.
There are many components of photo SEO, but here are the three most important steps to pay attention to and do.
Resize your images
Resizing your images is good for your site speed, and thus for your SEO. Google's new Core Web Vitals places a high value on serving properly sized and next generation photo formats to pass these metrics.
Resizing your images to the appropriate size for your theme (and future-proofing for theme changes to come) is important. Compressing your images to make them as light as possible is also key.
If your largest photo size on your website is 1400px wide, then there's no need to upload any photos wider than this. By reducing your files down to the appropriate dimensions, this reduces their file size too - speeding up the pace at which your website can show them to your visitors.
File names and Alt tags
Make your life easier by giving your photos proper file names before upload. This allows you to find images in the media search function if needed.
ALT tags are descriptive sentences explaining what is happening in the photographing. Adding ALT tags is a key step for accessibility. Screen readers use this information to deliver descriptions to blind and vision-impaired website visitors.
These two simple steps make your site easy for you to manage and easy for people to access. Don't unknowingly put road-blocks up because of accessibility.
Make things mobile friendly
Mobile responsiveness is at the forefront of web development, and has been for some years. Requesting a mobile responsive site from your web developer is one of the most important things you can do when having a site built. With the scales tipped at more mobile users than desktop, you should really be concentrating on mobile and designing for desktop as secondary.
This includes ensuring images display properly on small screens, and that the different versions of the image which WordPress produces to deliver with speed work for your site.
If you need a fast, user-friendly, mobile-friendly website, contact us today.
