6 Tips To Optimize Images For SEO To Increase Blog Traffic

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We all know that we should optimize our blog posts to rank well in search engine that help us to increase our blog traffic but today I will tell you how to use images for better search engine visibility. Every blogger either using blogger platform or wordpress platform, they must optimize their images while using them into their blog posts before publishing the post. Image optimization really works to improve blog traffic. Lots of webmasters search images from Google Image Search to use them into their blog posts. So, if you have well optimized images into your blog post then it will give you two benefits. One is bring traffic from image search and second is it help web crawlers to better understand your post topic hence higher SERP (Search Engine Result Position). Let's go to the tutorial to learn some helpful tips about image optimization for SEO.

Image Optimization Tips

Below are some very important tips to optimize images before uploading them into blog posts. These tips will improve your blog SEO

Use Keywords in Image Name

Have you download an image from internet or click them from your camera to use them into your blog posts? Yes! Wait buddy don't use them directly into your blog. First change their name into a keyword rich image name. By default image name look like this image1432.jpg or photo123.jpg. Always rename them with your post keyword. For example if I use any image for this post then I'll rename my image like this image-optimization.jpg.

Hyphen in Image Name

Remember when naming your images with your keywords neither use blank space nor underscore ( _ ) between them. Always use hyphen to separate the keywords like I have done in the first example. Because when your use blank space it will automatically convert to '%20' which have no meaning. In result web crawlers found difficulty to understand the image. Hyphen is always a better option for optimizing the image.

Use Best Format

There are lot of formats of images like JPG, PNG, GIF and others. But always use that image format which suits better for web. JPG image format is the most preferable image format by the webmasters because it uses less size memory as compare to other formats. Less image size will help you to reduce blog load time and hence better search engine ranking means more traffic.

Compress Images

Before uploading the images into your blog post, first remember that you have compressed them. Compressing the image also help to make your blog loading speed faster and reduce blog bounce rate. You can compress your images in Photoshop. To compress your image in Photoshop go to file menu and click onsave for web. It will reduce image size by maintaining the image quality.

Also you can use online tools to compress your image files. One of the best tool is Yahoo Smush it. Go for it and compress your images for free.

How to Use Images in Blog Post for Better Search Engine Visibility?

Now you have optimized your images. It's time to use them into your blog posts. Below are some advance tips that also come under image optimization in SEO. Read them carefully and follow the instructions.

Proper Dimension

When you upload your images into blog post, always give them proper dimensions. Mentioning the dimensions help in faster page loading. Web crawlers don't get confuse to assume its width and height. If you already give dimensions to your image, then it will be easier for web crawlers to better crawl your content. Use below format to give dimensions to your image.

<img width="320" height="210" src="URL of image"/>

Change above highlighted values according to your need.

Title Tag and Alt Tag

Title tag and Alt tag works as a description for your images. Web crawlers can't read images. They only understand them by their name, title tag and Alt tag. Always choose your best keyword to give title and alt tag for your image. To use these tags see the below example.

<img src="Image URL" title="Keyword"alt="Keyword"/>

Note: Don't add too many keywords in these tags. Only put your best keyword there which better explain your post topic.
I have write a detail tutorial to add title and alt attribute in images for Blogger.com users. Please check the below post.