Image SEO: 7+1 tips to get your photos to rank better

Your photographs are the basis of your business and having certain notions of SEO of images will help you to improve your positioning on the Internet and, therefore, to also have a greater visibility of your work. As you already know, Google takes into account all the content you publish on the web and images are not left behind, so it is important that you learn how to upload them to your photography website in such a way that they have the widest possible reach. 

In addition to helping you to better position your photography website, currently the search that users do through Google images accounts for almost 30% of the total searches that are made. Can you imagine the amount of extra traffic that can reach your website if you manage to improve the SEO of images? And this is exactly what we are going to explain today in this article where we are going to give you 7+1 tips to achieve it.

Learn how to improve the SEO of images and improve your positioning on the Internet.

Why is image SEO so important?

As you already know, SEO applied to texts is essential to position your content correctly in Google, especially those of your website and blog. But the truth is that this is not the only factor that influences as SEO of images will also help you a lot in this matter.

If you work correctly, SEO for images will allow you to appear in Google’s featured snippets, climb Google image rankings, gain organic traffic and improve your brand’s reach and popularity, among other things. Remember, however, that any SEO strategy requires patience and constant optimisation on your part.

In the following guide you will find more information on how to improve your SEO.

>> SEO guide for photographers to help you improve your web positioning

7+1 keys to improve the positioning of your photographs

You are a photographer and on your website the most content you are going to show is photographs, even on text pages or in articles, because, truth be told, web pages or posts that do not have images have less reading time than those that liven up the information with a series of photographs related to the content.

Therefore, to improve the positioning of your images it is important that you take into account a series of factors that we are going to explain below.

1# The weight of the images you upload to your website does have an impact on your ranking

It is often thought that the bigger the image, the better. However, if you are considering SEO optimisation, the ideal is that the photographs you upload to your website should be no larger than 150 KB. In fact, it is best if they are larger than 70 KB, which is what Google considers to be ‘optimal’. In this way, the loading speed of your website will improve considerably.

In case you didn’t know, all Arcadina’s websites for photographers automatically optimise the weight of all the images you upload to the website, so that they will always load quickly and will be ready to achieve an optimal web positioning, without you having to worry about anything.

2# Name your photos with descriptive text

To improve image SEO make sure that the names you assign to your photo files are as descriptive and relevant to the content of the image itself as possible. Avoid using more generic names, such as “image001.jpg” and use keywords related to the content of the image. Here is a better example, “juan-and-ana-wedding-report-2023-photo-001.jpg”.

To separate the words in the name of your photo, use hyphens and avoid capital letters, accents, the letter ñ and other less used signs. And if you have content on your website in several languages, remember to change the name of the photographs to the corresponding language.

3# Don’t forget to fill in the alt text or alt attribute

In this box of the alt attribute, you can add a descriptive text of the image so that search engines and users who cannot see the photo know what is represented in it. When creating this short description, don’t forget to include a number of relevant keywords that are related to the photo and take special care to describe the image concisely and accurately.

4# Filling in the description will also help with image SEO

The image description section is one of the most neglected sections of our website. As it is a text that requires a greater length, it is often left unfilled in many cases. However, it is a really important section to improve the positioning of your images. You only need to make a more or less literal description of the photograph in question, adding a series of keywords or keywords that users will search for in the alt attribute.

5# Use the image formats that Google likes best

Although there are a number of files that improve the quality of photographs, it is highly recommended that you try to use the formats that Google sets as ‘favourites’. These are the typical formats: jpg, png and gif. There are many online tools that will facilitate the process of converting your photos to these file extensions, such as Online Converter.

• jpeg: is the most popular image format used by users. It can also be useful for sending pictures via email as they can be compressed to very small sizes.
• SVG: if you are going to upload an icon or logo to your website you can use this format.
• PNG: if you want to upload a photo to your website with a transparency in the background of the image, this is the ideal format to use.
• WebP: you can use it if you want to use a higher compression than JPEG or PNG. It is suitable for animated images but does not work with older browsers.
• Etc.

6# Link Juice will also help you to rank your images

Link Juice is the strategy used in SEO to generate traffic through a series of external links thanks to the authority and relevance of the pages. What does this mean? It means that all the links that go to your website will ‘transfer’ relevance and authority to us, and with this you will be able to better position your photographers’ website.

This strategy also works for images. Therefore, it is essential that you use other social networks where your photos can be shared and redirect to your website, such as Pinterest, Tumblr or Instagram. Remember that social media is also a strong point for photographers, so don’t neglect it.

7# Make sure images are within the same context and relevant

Another issue that should not be overlooked is the context in which you introduce each photograph. It is highly recommended that all your images are accompanied by some text, and that this text is related to the content of the images. It can be the caption, the text that accompanies the photograph within the post, the title or subtitle of the page, etc.

In this case, Arcadina’s websites allow you to add a descriptive text to each image in a gallery, so that you can add value to the image and, incidentally, improve its web positioning.

It is also important that the images are relevant to the content of the page. Try not to use generic or irrelevant pictures just to attract attention. This could lead to a poor user experience and have a negative impact on SEO.

7+1# Detect photo errors on your website

Just as there are mechanisms and tools that will help you detect a series of errors in the incoming and outgoing links that you include in the content of your website, you will also find on the Internet several pages where you will be able to locate all the problems that are causing your website’s images without you knowing it. In Semrush you will be able to perform an audit of your website to detect these types of problems and filter the results to find the images that are acting incorrectly on your website.

Learn how to improve image SEO and make your photos “fly” on the Internet

Now that Google is showing more and more images in its results even before the first links, if you learn how to optimise SEO for images you will get more visibility with very little effort, so get to work and remember to apply all these tips when you are going to upload any picture to your website.

In the following article you will find more tips to improve the positioning of your photography website.

>> 5 keys to improve the positioning of a photography website

Today we are going to share with you the interview of the photographer Carlos Quirós from Caliq.

>> ‘The new improvements you have introduced are great’, Carlos Quirós

And to finish with a question: which of the 7 recommendations are you currently using to improve image SEO? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.

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