One important ranking factor in search engines and especially in Google is image optimization. It’s easy to believe that the advanced and smart search engines today could easily indicate what an image actually shows, something they still cannot. Since the search engines can not determine what an image represents, we therefore need to help the search engines understand what it is we are seeing in the image.

As everyone knows, good images are very important for a successful website, both for the search engines and for the visitor. Below we review some of the things to keep in mind when optimizing your images on your website:

Alt text

An alt text is a so-called HTML attribute that explains what an image shows. The alt text is not only used to show search engines what an image shows but is also used as a support for people with disabilities and especially for the visually impaired. The alt text should be a slightly shorter descriptive sentence and should always contain the keyword you used for the page where the image is located.

If we pretend that we want to place ourselves on the word “red shoes” on the current page and we have a picture of a person dancing in a pair of red shoes then the all-text can be “A person dances in a pair of red shoes”.

Image file name

Choosing the right file name is something many people forget. All images on a page have their own URL. The URL of the image is affected by the file name you choose, so here too it is a good idea to include the keyword when choosing the file name. Unlike the alt text, where you want a sentence that describes the image, in this case it is enough to have only the keyword as a name.

If we take the same example that we used above around the alt text with the red shoes then the file name could in short be “red shoes”.

As with everything else in e.g. development, design and digital marketing you can always contact us if you have any questions.