Tips to improve your images for SEO

Image Optimization

Images can send useful information to search engines through their file name alt text, title, description and caption. Let's take a look at Google Image best practices and how we can improve the images for SEO in my job board Sportekjobs. 

[Sportekjob - jobs collections for specific industries]

 

Improve alt text

As you can see above I have several job collections for specific industries. All of them are linking to a list of current job openings and hiring companies. So for example for the eSports collection I have the following alt text:

img(src='images/esports.png' alt='Job openings in eSports')

If you are not sure how to add a good alt text to your image, I can highly recommend Image Alt Text: What It Is, How to Write It, and Why It Matters to SEO by Hubspot. They pointed out Alt Text Best Practices in their article:

• Describe the image, and be specific.
• Keep your alt text fewer than 125 characters. 
• Don't start alt text with "picture of..." or "Image of..."
• Use your keywords, but sparingly.
• Don't cram your keyword into every single image's alt text.

Optimize for speed

Images are often a big contributor to the overall page size and make pages very slow. You can easily analyze your site speed by using PageSpeed Insights . If I analyze Sportekjobs I need to improve the images above all for mobile devices by using responsive image techniques, which brings us to the next important aspect.

Responsive Images

I am always struggling with making my site mobile ready. Google gives a good example of how to add responsive images to your site by using the img srcset

Use high-quality images

Google suggests using high-quality photos and sharp images. You can easily find awesome photos un Unsplash and use them for your website. 

Add an image sitemap

If you want to give Google additional details about your images you could add a sitemap to your site. Read more about sitemap generation for your images here: Manage your sitemaps. 

 

 

Sources

Google Image best practices

Image Alt Text: What It Is, How to Write It, and Why It Matters to SEO

Tools

Unsplash

PageSpeed Insights