- Images play a big role
in not only the visualization of your website,
but also the SEO of your website.
So let's talk about
how to perfectly optimize your images today.
(upbeat music)
Hello, everybody.
My name is Paul Carey
and I'm an SEO consultant here at Launch Site Boost.
And in today's video,
I wanna talk to you
about how you can perfectly optimize your images
for your website
to not only please your website visitors,
but to also please the likes of the search engines.
Now, the first point I wanna bring up
is to use your own unique images.
Now, look, I know in some cases,
some people aren't able to use their own images
because they don't have them.
And if that's the case,
stock images will do,
but I would try and stay away from stock images
if at all possible.
A few years ago,
we were actually working with a chiropractor.
Now, this particular chiropractor,
they had hired a photographer to come in and take pictures
whilst they were working in their practice.
Now, the photographer was actually there
for I'd say half of the working day
because the pictures that came out
were not just off the same single person
time and time again.
It was actually of several different people
having slightly different adjustments done to them,
which made a lot of sense.
Now, not only does that mean
that then that chiropractor has images
of the exact service that somebody is looking for,
may it be back pain on one particular page
or neck pain on one particular page,
but they've actually images
of someone having that particular treatment done,
but it's also by that particular chiropractor.
So that means that if someone actually sees the website
and then chooses
to avail of the particular chiropractor's services,
well, that means when they go in for their treatment,
they're met with a friendly recognizable face.
Now, look, I know not everybody is comfortable on camera.
You may not want to have a photographer photograph you
at work or even with clients.
And obviously if you are doing that,
get the permission of the clients as well.
But trust me,
it does make a whole world of difference to your website.
Now, when you do have those images,
those nice new, unique images for your website,
what you need to do before any of them are uploaded,
well, actually there's a few different things,
but one of them is the file name.
We don't just want to leave the file name
as the default of what the photographer gave to us.
But we wanna actually rename this particular file.
So if in that case,
the picture was someone
who was actually getting a neck treatment
from this particular chiropractor,
well, that file name
might be actually neck chiropractor services,
something along those sorts of lines
or the particular primary keyword
that you're trying to target.
Now, there's no point in actually naming the file,
or renaming the file should I say
as soon as it's given to you by the photographer
because what you'll need to do first
is actually compress that image.
Now, image comparison basically just means
that the actual size of the image won't be huge,
and it'll actually be compressed down,
but keeps the quality
so that it loads much faster on a website,
especially if somebody's searching on a mobile device.
Now, look, there's lots of different tools
that you can use for this.
We personally use Photoshop
to first of all reduce the image and save it for web,
but then we also in most cases,
because most of our clients are using WordPress,
we will then upload it to WordPress
and then also use ShortPixel as a plugin
which will then further optimize that image.
However, what you should also do
even before ShortPixel has done this for you,
is actually get the image proportions right.
So it's one thing to actually resize the image
so it doesn't take forever to load,
but depending on where the image will be placed
on your website,
if it's going to be a full length image,
it might be 1000 by 500 pixels.
Or if it only is gonna take up half of the page
and there's texts on the other side
or the other half of the page,
then that particular picture might only be 500 by 250.
If that's going to be the case,
what you should do is save that image as 500 by 250,
save it for web in the likes of Photoshop,
then upload it to your website.
Because not only will this have a compressed size,
but it's also at the right proportions.
And then also still even after that,
it'll still be optimized further
by the likes of ShortPixel.
And the last thing we'll talk about in today's video
is your image alt tag.
So your image alt tag is going to display
if for whatever reason the image doesn't load
or if someone's using some accessibility options
on your website.
However, do bear in mind
that this is something that a search engine can see
as they're crawling your website.
They'll see 'alt'
and then they'll see whatever you've actually written.
Now, the alt tag should actually explain what the image is
in case somebody can't see it for whatever reason.
So if it is a case of somebody receiving a neck treatment
from this particular chiropractor,
well, it could be
'previous patient receiving chiropractic neck treatment'.
Because that explains what the image is
whilst also being clever enough
to mix in some of those important keywords.
So do bear in mind,
if you are optimizing your alt tags,
you do need to describe what the actual image is.
You just have to be clever with your wording
so that you can include some of those important keywords.
So there you have it,
that was five different ways
that you can actually optimize the images on your website,
not only for the user experience,
but also for the likes of a search engine.
And obviously the more that you can please a search engine
and the more signals that you can give to them
so they can understand your website,
the more people they can actually show your website to
in the search results.
So that brings me to an end of today's video.
I hope you got a bit of value from it.
If you do have any questions or comments,
as always, please do leave them in the comment section below
as we do our very best
to reply to each and every single one of them.
But as I mentioned, I'll end the video here.
Hopefully you've got a bit of value
and we'll speak again soon, bye.