having an attractive site is obviously
important for making a good first impression on your visitors
this is why it's crucial that you use great looking images to accompany your site copy
and to communicate the overall personality of your company
however it's also important that you optimize your images for indexing by the search engines
and optimize them so that they will load quickly
this video will provide you with specific instructions on
how to optimize your site images using alt tags and other tools
first let's explore how your images quote unquote look to the search engines
search engines send out automated programs called spiders
that crawl your site and search for what type of content it contains
although spiders aren't able to actually see the images
they are able to read the text which is associated with those images
and with this information
and the information gathered from the rest of your content and your metadata
the search engine determines the theme of your site
and there are actually three types of text that the search engine spiders quote unquote see
when they look at your images
the image alt tags
which are also accessible by means of programs that dictate text
to web users who are vision impaired
the actual name of your image files
for example oceanlandscape.jpg
and the image captions
or the text which is found directly beside over or underneath your images
optimizing each of these types of text enhances the seo of your site
and assists you further in communicating your site's theme to the search engines
since google and other search engines are unable to see your images
it is important that you use this alternative text or alt text
to tag the images with the information you want the search engines
to know about the images that you have on your site
these alt tags will help the search engines locate your images and display them in the serps
now with current technology at least
google doesn't know that you have an image of a flying squirrel on your site unless you tell it
so be sure to optimize your alt tags
every time you put a new image onto your site
you'll be asked to input what is called an alt tag to describe the image
and you want to use this to not only describe the image
but also use the opportunity to use appropriate keywords
for which you're optimizing that specific page for
as always keyword stuffing won't do you any favors but good keyword usage will
same goes for the actual image file names
when you create and save the images for your site
it's a good idea to use your keywords in the image file name as well
just be sure of course
that you still have a way to distinguish the images on your site from one another
you don't want all of your images using the same keyword or keywords
so don't be super generic or repetitive here
when naming your images be as descriptive as possible
you want keyword rich words to describe the image to the search engines
so think about how you would easily efficiently and effectively
describe the image to someone who's visually impaired for instance
also it is important to note that
decorative images should not have alt tags
search engines like google could end up penalizing you for over optimization
if you start using the alt tag option to stuff
keywords into your page for borders for decorative lines or other decorative images
so only describe quote & unquote
real images in the title or description
and use the alt tag for images that require them
not just every icon or image file because you can
image captions above or below your images are an additional measure of optimization
for example if you have an image of a
before and after shot of a customer for an exercise or diet site
you might want to use the following caption
jane says the healthy weight loss plan helped her go from a size 14 to a size 6
as always just be sure that the use of your keywords within your captions looks natural
and that it adds value to the visitors who are viewing this site
if you have any links either on your site or off which are leading to your images
again be sure to use keywords within the anchor text of that link as well
and as a final step you can check to see if your images have been indexed in google images
to do this just go to google images
and type in
site:yoursite.com into the search bar
once you do this you'll see a page displaying the images on your site
as they have been indexed by google images
and if some potentially keyword rich or description rich images are missing here
then you know what to do
and just a few last tips as you're
probably already aware don't use
large images on your site and simply shrink them down in the code
as this will increase your load time
be sure to compress your images properly beforehand
down below 70k whenever possible
while of course still making sure that they are clear and crisp for viewing
only use images on your site that are directly related to your theme or topic
if you have tons of images consider using an image site map for optimizing indexing
now optimizing your images can do more than just increase the seo of your site
it will also help you get traffic from google images itself
now if you have a large website and you feel that the image data needs
to be optimized according to the guidelines in this video
but don't have the time to do it yourself
you can always hire the job out
it's relatively simple and shouldn't break the bank
but images are a huge part of your google searches
so they can help boost your website traffic if you know what you're doing
and it doesn't take long to go through the pages and add alt tags and proper descriptions
titles and captions to your images
but it's very well worth the effort
and of course there are plenty of sites that offer images with royalty free options
some require you to pay a subscription fee others on an image by image basis
and some are completely free
each site's different so be sure you read the instructions for each before using
any of the images available on their site
and remember that when using image sources from other websites
it's important that you check your images for any broken links quite regularly
especially if the image source comes from smaller websites or ones that offer the image for free
feel free to check out our other videos so you can keep
fine-tuning and getting most of your seo
and click subscribe to stay updated with new tips and tricks
to get you to the top of the search engine results pages