Don’t you want your infographics to show up at the top of Google image search? Of course, yes! Now how do you do it – image SEO is the solution.
Wondering what is Image SEO?
Image optimization refers to the practice of reducing the file size of your images without jeopardizing the quality. This practice helps in increasing page load times, thereby boosting User Experience. The process also assists in getting your infographics to rank on Google and other image search engines. Therefore, image SEO is not only important; it is indispensable if you want to emerge as a prominent organization in the cut-throat competition.
How to optimize your images?
Here we have listed 9 Actionable Tips For Creating Best Optimized Infographics. Take a look and perform the optimization process.
1. Original, High-Quality & Relevant Images Give An Edge To Infographics
What actually attracts the viewers to your infographics? The images, of course. But if you design using dull and blurry graphics needless to say none will get interested and your infographics will stay unnoticed. The outcome – you find yourself trapped and eventually one fine day you are extinct.
A little change in perception reveals that original and high quality images grab your audience’s attention. In addition to that, if you use an image that’s not at all relevant to the content naturally, your viewers won’t stop to take a glance.
Hence, it’s incredibly crucial to be careful while you choose the image. When your visitors see a beautifully-designed infographic, they come to know your company’s brand personality and respect your expertise in the industry.
Several market surveys reveal using high-quality, original and relevant images is one of the vital steps towards image SEO. Thus, to get a better search engine ranking on Google, invest some time to find excellent quality yet original image.
2. Appropriate File Name is The Best SEO image optimizer
When you create an infographic, isn’t your main aim to let Google know what your image content is all about?
How do you convey this to the search engine? The trick is to choose an appropriate file name. The filename gives Google clues about the subject matter of the image.
When it’s about helping your infographics rank on search engines, use relevant keywords. Descriptive, keyword-rich file names are pivotal for on-page SEO image optimization. It’s no secret that search engines not only crawl the text on your infographics, they also crawl your image file names.
Now how do you find out the useful keywords?
Brainstorm and find out how your target audience might search for products on your website. You can also look-up at your website analytics to see what keyword patterns your customers follow. Decide upon the most common naming patterns and refer that formula to your image file naming process.
For example, suppose you are creating an infographic on ‘Lead Nurturing’ -don’t use any generic name to save the file instead your file name should be ‘Lead Nurturing.’
Needless to say, such an approach will definitely make your pages and images rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).
3. Save The Image Into The Right File Type
One necessary aspect of optimizing images for SEO and when it’s about infographics is to know the three most common image file types- JPEG, GIF and PNG.
Here’s a brief explanation of each file type. Take a look:
- JPG or JPEG is one of the most common file types among the three
This file format uses small file sizes and is widely supported. But what is seen – images saved under this file type are not always of good quality. Moreover, such formats don’t support transparent background even. So, naturally, you won’t prefer ‘JPG’ format as you know in some cases JPG won’t work.But the best part is – this file type can be compressed yet maintaining the image quality. Hence when it’s about optimizing infographics, you need to pay attention to page loading speed and JPEG files help in this.
- GIF image file types cannot be used widely
GIF files don’t support a variety of color range. So, when your infographic uses images with simple colors, GIF format can be a good choice.
GIFs have lower-resolution file types and they also support transparent backgrounds. These attributes make GIF best for icons and decorative images.
- PNG is another file type that comes in higher resolutions than GIFs
PNGs have larger file sizes than JPEGs. Furthermore, PNGs support a text description of the image, which in turn is an excellent image SEO move.However, the main flaw of using PNG formats – they require larger file sizes than JPG and GIF, which is not always possible. Although it can be a good choice from the rest as it’s best for complex images and those include texts.
Considering all the above, JPEG file is ideal for infographic, in case you are unable to use JPEG format, saving it in PNGs can be the best decision to get the best quality for its size.
4. Resize Your Image Files Corresponding To Your Site Dimensions
According to Google algorithm, page speed is one of the signals for ranking pages. The thing is when a page is slow in loading search engines can crawl fewer pages using their allocated crawl budget. Now, this poses an adverse effect on your indexation. Moreover, page speed is also a vital parameter to boost user experience too. Needless to say, pages with a longer load time tend to have higher bounce rates and lower average time on page.
Websites and pages having images with higher resolution and larger dimensions will load slower, as your browser needs to render more data. Therefore, to help increase page load speed, image optimization is a must.
Although file size and image size are interrelated, yet they are two different things. Image size means the dimensions of an image while the file size is the amount of space required to store it on the server. To conclude, this indicates if the size of your infographic is more significant, it’s more likely you need to match the file size.
On the other hand, supposedly you have a visually small infographic, yet the same infographic may have a bigger file size than twice its size. So, what you can do is check the file’s details so that you have a clear idea on how to optimize your infographic for better-featured image SEO. Try reducing the file sizes of your images through resizing and compression that too without losing quality.
5. Adding Explanatory Captions Is Image Optimization Best Practice
Including explanatory captions to your images is one of the best ways to get SEO Image. Such captions play a significant role because they help the readers to get a clear view of what you have tried to offer in your infographic.
Most of the time, it may happen that readers skim through your infographics. Adding descriptive captions telling readers what the infographic talks about can also encourage them to read through or recall your post.
Research reveals infographics without captions have 81% less recall. In the case of infographics, adding a caption at the bottom can give visitors an idea of what data you’re presenting in your graphic.
6. Appropriate Alt Tags Helps You In Image Optimization
Now here comes the interesting part – images are understood by your viewers well but do search engine spiders crawl through these? The answer is no. You need alternative texts to provide the search engines to index your image content accurately.
There are several benefits of using an appropriate alt tag – the first and foremost advantage is it provides context and helps visually impaired users too. Secondly, even when images take time to load, search engines can still read the alternative text to help rank a page.
What to include in an alt text? Simply use brand-relevant words and boost your infographic’s visibility. Although there’s no ideal number of words, yet to have the maximum benefit, it’s suggested that you shouldn’t stuff the text with keywords.
7. Use Site Maps To Get Identified By Search Engine
To draw maximum visitors and to rank in SERP, you need image sitemap. Develop a sitemap that keeps all relevant images of your website in one place.
This process will definitely help improve overall image SEO by letting the search engine know that you have infographics on your site. As a result, search engines identify the infographics from your website, boosting the chances of getting discovered in a relevant image search.
As you know, web crawlers can’t crawl images that are not available on the webpage source code. So, to let crawlers understand about the unidentified photos, it’s ideal for listing their location in an image sitemap.
Although using sitemaps doesn’t guarantee about image indexing by Google, yet it’s undoubtedly a positive step towards image SEO.
8. Use image Optimization SEO Tool To Your Advantage
When it’s about compressing your image for image optimization, you need image optimization tools.
Here we have collected some of the SEO tools, try them out-
- JPEG Optimizer image optimization tool
If you are looking for a simple image optimization tool, JPEG Optimizer is the one. This tool allows you to compress and then upload the photos online. The tool has an image compression level bar that makes it more comfortable how to optimize pictures according to your need. Such reduced images can load faster on your site.
- Optimizilla
Optimizilla is yet another tool known to reproduce great quality images with the lowest file size possible. If you have JPEG and PNG photos, you can compress them with this tool with ease. The slider available here shows you preview of before and after version of the image editing. Looking at the preview, you can figure out whether there’s any noticeable loss in quality or not.One of the benefits of using Optimizilla is – it can upload up to 20 images. Additionally it sets the compression level for each photo separately.
- ImageRecycle
ImageRecycle is ideal for compressing JPEG, PNG, GIF and PDF images. The tool has an option to drag and drop photos into their site to get them optimized. The tool also has an API for developers to utilize ImageRecycle’s compression capabilities.Using this tool, you can analyze your website too and get a report also. This way, you will understand which images need optimization to increase the performance on your site.
9. Conduct an Analysis of Image optimization Google Search Console
After you have followed all the steps of optimizing your infographic images, won’t you want to know whether you are on the right track or not?
When you want to find out how your site is performing in terms of image SEO, the step is to analyze with Google Search Console.
Log in to your Search Console and go to Performance Report, select Image and ‘Apply.’ Data on image impressions appear in front of you, along with clicks, pages, etc.
However, there’s one thing which you need to understand -Google Search Console can’t distinguish between multiple images in a page.
The trick to determine how your infographics are performing is to limit the images and infographics to one or two at most per post. This process would allow you to read your results more accurately.
Key Takeaway
Image SEO may seem a tedious process, yet it’s one of the most essential things that can take your infographic to your audience. With appropriate optimization, your website will get ranked on search engines. Optimizing images for SEO will pay off in the long run in increasing traffic in your infographic as well as website. Most importantly, when you add infographics to your website and optimize your images, you would rank at the top in SERP.
If you are in search of high quality images and excellent infographics to convey your message to your audience, Infographic Design Team is here. The creative heads present have the ability to perceive what you visualize and create infographics that are sure to bring you excellent results.
