We’re living in an increasingly visual world. And in this world, the value of image optimization can’t be overlooked. Images make your webpages more appealing. More likely than not, there’s an image on every page of your website. Without the proper optimization, however, you’re wasting a valuable SEO asset. Plus, the larger the file size, the longer it takes your page to load, and the higher your bounce rate will be.
Image optimization creates many advantages for your image assets, including better user experience, faster page load times, and additional ranking opportunities, both within the traditional and image search results.
Although visual search technology has made great strides of late, search engine bots are unable to identify the content of an image; they rely on the text associated with the images to fully understand what the image is and how it relates to your content or the topic of your page.
But which factors are most important to ensure your images are findable and don’t slow down your site?
Here are 14 important image optimization tips you need to know.
1. Stock Images Won’t Help Your SEO
You want your photos to pop on your site. If you fill your website with stock imagery, you’ll look unoriginal – like thousands of other sites that don’t stand out.Too many websites are cluttered with the same generic stock photos.
Think about a corporate website, a consulting firm, a business that prides itself on customer service. All these websites use virtually the same looking stock image of a business man smiling.
I’m sure you’ve seen one that looks like this: