Tips Improve Your SEO with Images

Tips Improve Your SEO with Images. Everyone knows that you should add images to your blog posts to make them more attractive. Blog posts with images look better, stand out more and attract more readers.
If you are routinely blogging without images, you are likely wasting a good deal of your potential readership simply on the fact your content looks boring to those who find your words.

But can images be useful for SEO?
Everyone knows that Google can’t “read” images like it can text nor are they truly searchable. Sure, there is an image search function, it only looks at text around the image and is not exactly the best tool for gaining traffic, especially after the recent overhaul.
Still, there are several ways that images can easily help you improve your SEO, including these 5 very easy suggestions:

Use Original Images

Google Image Search now has a “similar images” function that works moderately well. Images that are too similar to others on the Web are less likely to get attention from Google as the results try to focus on a variety of relevant images. If possible, use your own images, even if you have to take screenshots.

Use Keywords in File Names

Load up your file names with relevant keywords. Make it clear what the image is and how it relates to the larger post.  Try to separate keywords with a dashes to help the SEs understand what the keywords actually are.

Use the Title Attribute

Use the title attribute on your IMG tags as a means to add still more relevant keywords. Your title is a way to associate text with your image directly in a way that human visitors rarely see but SEs place high value on.

Use the Alt Attribute

Much like the title attribute, the alt attribute of the IMG tag is yet another opportunity to add relevant keywords. However, remember that the alt attribute is also used by screen readers for the visually impaired so make sure that this tag is also useful for human that might need to read it.

Link the Image

An image is also an opportunity to provide another link to a different page on your site. WordPress, for example, automatically creates a new page for each uploaded image and can link to that. You can also have the image link back to the post itself, which is useful if the post is scraped or otherwise misused.
In addition to the above steps, you may want to consider enabling reuse of your images, either via embedding, to let others take advantage of them in exchange for dofollow links back. Depending on the nature of your site, the links from external domains may be much more valuable than the exclusive use of the images themselves.
All in all though, images are an often-overlooked but still very important part of a robust SEO strategy. Fortunately, it only takes a few seconds to turn an image into a powerful tool for SEO and, since you are probably putting images into your posts anyway, it’s time well spent.
In fact, the hardest part for many is remembering to take the steps, no actually doing them.