How to Optimize and rank in Google Image Search

How to Optimize and rank in Google Image Search
How to Optimize and rank in Google Image Search

Ranking image can bring you as more traffic as the content rank itself brings you. So how do you rank your images in google, bing, yandex, baidu and other search engines?. In this topic you find it all.

How to Optimize and rank in Google Image Search

Ranking in google images will be the sweetest thing that will happen to your blog, it gives you the engagement and visitors you need. Before you upload any image file to your blog there is one important thing you should consider doing first, and that is to name the file you will be uploading.

The Image name

How to Optimize and rank in Google Image Search: image name
Image name


How to perfectly name your image

Let say you already find the image you need to upload on a page title of "how to optimize and rank for image search". Before uploading, First make sure you do not use default iamege names like Screenshot-012019.jpg, or Image.jpg (or something like "how to optimize and rank for image search") in the file name, instead use "how-to-optimize-and-rank-for-image-search". This title will remain even when you upload it. But when you do not use hyphen then the image will look something like this "how%20to%optimize%20..." to human and search engines making it meaningless or somehow hard to read.

How to Optimize and rank in Google Image Search: The wrong way / procedure
The wrong way

How to Optimize and rank in Google Image Search: The right way / procedure
The right way

Image quality

Image quality is so valuable to searchers, assuming i was describing something in an image but you find the image blurry and you can't clearly read what's on the image clearly you will get angry and possibly not be satisfied, you will leave the page and if I continue to do this, there is possibility you will not return to read here again. So image quality is so important for better user experience. Always upload sharp images.

File Format

JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) files are images that have been compressed to store a lot of visual information in a small-size file.

PNG (Portable Network Graphics) file format was created as a free, open-source alternative to GIF.

The preferable here is JPEG, since it does not loose all quality, and it also helps your page load faster than PNG, then why not go for JPEG, when it helps in speeding up your page. See all other relevant image formats.

File size

Compressing images is an act of on page optimization. You should always consider reducing the size of your image without loosing quality. this will help your page load time.

Now its time you upload

Image Properties

How to Optimize and rank in Google Image Search: image properties
Add image properties

On every blog, be it WordPress or Blogger or any other web hosting site, there is availability to use Title text and Alt tags, this are the most important things about an image, it describes what an image is or what is in the image.

How to Optimize and rank in Google Image Search: Add image title text and Alt text
Add image title text and alt text

The alt text: (alternative text or alternative tag) is a text added to an image incase the image fails to load or display to visitors.

Image title text: is used to provide a title for your image. Unlike alternative text, the text you enter inside the title tag will not be shown to user when a image fails to load or display.

How to Optimize and rank in Google Image Search: The Image Caption
Add Image Caption

Image Caption: the words closely attached beneath images are captions, they have no direct impact on SEO, unlike alt and title text, this visible directly to user on a website page, either the image fails to load or not, the caption will describe the image. It increase users experience on a page.

Title, Alt and caption of the image can help you in being in google first page as featured images to a topic users are searching for. This will massive increase your traffic due to some people looking for an image than reading a text, they just click on the featured image.

Relevant Images

Relevance is important, use images that has relevant or best describe your content topic or what you are discussing, do not use title as bait and change your page content.

Page URL

How to Optimize and rank in Google Image Search: The page permalink
The page permalink

The URL of the page your image is located should describe the content of your page, also it should have a relation to the image properties on your page.

Page Title and Description

How to Optimize and rank in Google Image Search: The page Title
Page title should also describe your entire page

Your post title must have similar description to your image, it is the most important of all, if you don't do all we have mention, do this. Earlier we told you to do away with default title like image.jpg, but even though you use the default title there is still a chance of your image ranking on Google provided you use the right title.

How to Optimize and rank in Google Image Search: Describe your page in the page description
Describe your page

The page should be accurately describe, if you its well described then you might just get lucky to be the one to be on google feaute and also the chances of ranking your image increases.

Backlinks

Backlinks play a key role on ranking an image. What are backlinks? Backlinks are links pointing from one website to another page on another website. Search engines consider backlinks as a votes for a specific page and domain. Pages with a high number of backlinks tend to have high organic ranking in search engine result pages. Links from other authority site boost your page and also help push your image to rank high in image search.

Domain authority

The overall authority of your website tends to help you boost pages in your index. What is Domain Authority? It is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz which predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). The score ranges from one to 100, the higher your number the higher the chances of ranking high.

Page authority

Page authority, aslo developed by Moz, is a metric that predict the ability or probability of a specific page to rank higher in search engines. It ranges from 0 to 100. The higher your number the higher chances of ranking.

Content surrounding the images

Content that surround the image. example is caption, it is the most closest to image make sure it describe the image. And close words / text to the image are example of content surrounding it.

Image engagement and popularity

When your image gets more and more clicks, it means it is getting popular. It also means this image satisfy the need of the user, in return Google and other search engines push you up so that searchers will not take long to find what they are looking for.

Page speed

You page speed should be at least at an average, this will boost the overall page rank and also make your image move upward than other slow website. You can use google page insight tool to check your page speed.

Quick Summary

  • File name
  • Image Quality
  • Image format
  • Image size
  • Image properties
  • Relevance
  • Page URL
  • Page Description
  • Backlinks
  • Domain authority
  • Page authority
  • Content surrounding the images
  • Image popularity
  • Page speed

Reference

  • https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/114016
  • https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_file_formats#Major_graphic_file_formats
  • https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Comments

  1. Thank you for this information it very useful. Though I always use the alt, title and caption but I learn more today. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @Samuraeh, i am glad you read, learn and love it, pls take a moment to share.

      Delete

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