Google Images: Tips for better web visibility: Mastering Google Images is a powerful way to help users find visual content online. As a website owner, it’s crucial to optimise your images for better visibility.
John Mueller, a Search Advocate at Google, recently shared some valuable insights. He explained how Google Images works and offered best practices for image optimisation.
Images aren’t just for Google Images search. They can appear in traditional web searches and Google Discover as well. This means your images have multiple opportunities to attract visitors.
Before diving into optimisation, consider what you want to achieve with your images. Think about how users might search for your content visually.
Here are some key tips for mastering Google images:
- Provide good context: Ensure your images are relevant to the page content. Use appropriate titles and headings to give context to your visuals.
- Optimise image placement: Put images near relevant text and consider adding captions. Place your most important image near the top of the page.
- Use Alt attributes: These help both users who can’t see images and search engines understand your content.
- Use high-quality images: Sharp, clear images are more appealing and likely to attract clicks.
- Create informative, high-quality content: The text on your page is just as significant as the visuals.
- Make your site mobile-friendly: More people search Google Images on mobile than desktop.
- Use a logical URL structure for image files: This helps Google understand your images better.
- Don’t block images with robots.txt: Unless you don’t want them shown in search results.
For those wanting to go further, consider using structured data markup. This provides machine-readable information about your pages and content.
Large image previews can help generate visits from Google Discover. Adding licensing information to images can also be beneficial.
Finally, don’t forget about speed. Images often slow down page load times, so optimise them for performance.
Google Search Console is a great tool for tracking how your images perform in search results. It can help you spot problems and opportunities.
By following these tips, you can improve your images’ visibility on Google. This can lead to more traffic and better engagement with your website.
Remember, optimising images is an ongoing process and integral to mastering Google images. Regularly review and update your approach for the best results.
Recommended free software!
Upscayl
This is a great piece of free software I use all the time. Not only can you upscale your images, you can convert your image to PNG, JPEG or WEBP as well as many other features. Download it from here https://upscayl.org/
ShortPixel
If you just want to optimise a few images, ShortPixel is user-friendly online tool you can access here: https://shortpixel.com/online-image-compression
You can compress JPG, GIF and PNG online totaly free. The files should have maximum 10Mb but there is a free login for more features.
In terms of free plugins, if you are running a WordPress site, I recommend any of the following:
These are my top 3 but there are plenty of others. Just search from the dashboard in your WordPress site in the plugins section for what is available and whether the plugin has been updated. Also, be sure to check it’s compatible with your version of WordPress.
Finally, be sure to check my other posts on optimising your site. You can also request a free audit of your site by using the contact form here.
