Image optimization is a critical part of SEO.

Just as the content you write for your site needs to speak to both your audience and Google, so do your images.

Image SEO is more than just getting your images to rank. It’s about optimizing your images so they:

• Keep yo...

You need to show that you really have something that’s unique and compelling and of high quality.

Although more companies use stock photos, marketers believe that original graphics are more valuable.

What to use instead of cliché stock photos:

• Your own illustrations & graph...

Commonly used image file types

• JPEG – lossy compressed file format, usually the smallest file size; ideal for photos
• PNG – usually larger file size than JPEGs; ideal for line drawings, screenshots, images that contain text or transparent backgr...

Resize your images to fit your page dimensions.

There’s a simple rule of thumb – use dimensions appropriate for your page width (or just slightly bigger). 

Resize the image before uploading it. Storing a 3 MB photo on your website makes no sense even if you resize it afterward (unless...

Compression is a process that strips away inessential data and file bytes while (mostly) preserving the quality of your image. 

2 types of compression:

1. Lossy compression is the process of removing small bits from a JPEG or GIF file. It is irreverable. Image quali...

They are useful for helping visitors understand what the visual content on a page looks like without being able to see it & serve as important information Google pays attention to when trying to gather what a page is about.

Image SEO metadata needs to be:

• Descriptive so explains ...

Your server makes a copy of your web page and all its content — including images — so that it doesn’t have to recreate the page every time someone requests to see it.

Considering how infrequently you’re likely to change images on your web pages, caching is a great way to minimize the stress...

Moving your images to a content delivery network (CDN) might also be helpful.

A CDN is a network of servers that sits above your main hosting server. When activated, your site is cached and sent to those remote servers with the aim of reducing the physical gap between your website and its v...

Structured data allow you to mark up the information about the web page.

schema.org is the body that manages structured data (schema markup) that we use on the web.

Another great resource for getting ideas on how to use structured data & add images to your search results is Google Sea...

If 57% of the time spent on a page is above-the-fold, lazy loading becomes a useful tool in conserving your server’s energy.

The process works like this:

• Someone visits your website.
• Your server receives the request.
• Rather than process the entire web page and mak...

Considering about a quarter of all web searches take place on Google Image Search, it would be beneficial to generate an image sitemap apart from your regular XML sitemap. 

This way, you can ensure that Google has a list of all the images that are rank-worthy along with the image SEO data y...