To improve your website’s SEO (search engine optimization), use keywords in your title tags, meta descriptions, and alt text for each image. Also, include relevant keywords in your content.

Add Alt Text to All Images for them to appear in Google Search Images

Figure 1.

If you upload an image to your site, make sure to add alt text to describe what the image is. When using WordPress this is the first field that is shown in the image options. Refer to the image above. This will help search engines understand what the image is about and how to display it. Make sure to use the main keywords used for the page it’s on as the first words in your alt text.

For instance, if the page is about Web Design Software then make sure the image keyword starts with “Web Design Software”

Include Keywords in Image Titles.

The second field is the Title field and by default, it uses the file name to create the image title. When using descriptive titles make sure to include relevant keywords in the title so people searching for those terms will find your images more easily.

Create Descriptive Image Names.

If you upload an image file with a descriptive name, such as “image_of_a_cat_on_the_couch.jpg,” then you’ll be able to find it easier when searching online. Once again, this image name by default is used to populate the Title field.

Figure 2.

You will see in figure 2, that the keywords “digital rink schedule” that our images are ranking in most of the results and all of the top row. That is the power of doing SEO on images. Yellow checkmarks are the images that rank our keywords on smoothweblife.tv

Image Compression

If you are using WordPress, when you upload an image it compresses to a smaller file that is loaded faster. However, when you use the featured image WordPress uses the slower uncompressed version.

Programs like Photoshop will take a digital camera file that is 25 mega bytes down to 0.250 megabytes. All images need to be compressed mostly because of the average internet speed of mobile devices. If you have 4 mages at 25 megabytes, that is 100MB which is much larger than most YouTube videos.

You can also use plugins like AutoOptimize to compress images to make sure all your images are fast loading.

Use Schema Markup.

To help search engines better understand your website, use schema markup. It allows you to describe your pages with tags that tell search engines more about your content. These tags will appear in search results, helping them understand what your page is about.

Schema is also used to enhance your search results with review stars, review count, product price, image, and more.

Figure 3.

In figure 3, the keywords “digital rink schedule” (which we dominate) shows our top result with Schema markup. We have review stars, vote count, price, software version and type of software (multimedia). This is the power of Schema Markup.

Use Google Search Console to Monitor Ranking Changes.

If you’re not sure how to add schema markup to your site, as it can be a bit complicated, we recommend you contact your developer to support you. If you do not have a web developer on hand, you can contact us for assistance.

You can also use Google’s Search Console to monitor changes in your rankings. This free service lets you see when your site has been indexed by Googlebot, as well as track changes in your ranking.

You can also use Google Rich Results Test to test your Schedule, visit here.