Image Optimization for SEO

Image Optimization

1. 

 

Find the right image: Always give first priority to adding your own original and unique images. Your article should have an image that has the same subject as your article. It is wrong on all levels if you choose to use any image just for the sole purpose of adding an image. The image should portray the topic of the post or webpage, or have some illustrative importance within the article The reason behind is that an image surrounded by interrelated text, ranks higher for the keyword associated with it for optimization.

2. 

Prepare images for use in your article: On finding the right image for your content be it a chart, an illustration or simply a photo, the next step is to optimizing that image as per the associated keyword or content on your website. This involves several things to be taken into consideration.

3. 

Choose the right file name: Image SEO begins with choosing the right file name for the Image. This is the first place where you can use the keyword for which you want that particular content or page to rank. Google cannot read images. Google can only read text and so incase of images it reads the text related to it starting from the name of your image file. For example, if your image is a cat with background of Eiffel tower, the file name should not be IMG-00012345.jpg, but cat-at-eiffel-tower.jpg. The main keyword would be “cat at Eiffel Tower”, as it is the main subject of the photo and that is why it should be added at the beginning of the file name.

4. 

Scale for image SEO: Image loading time is a crucial factor when User Experience is concerned and thus, important for SEO. The faster it takes for a site to load, the easier it is to visit and thus indexing of the particular page is better. Images have a huge impact on loading times of a webpage, Even if you add a huge image and display it really small on the webpage, like using a 1500×500 pixels image and showing it at 150×50 pixels size. The entire weight of the image will still have to be loaded. Thus, images should be scaled to the size you want to show it. WordPress provides the image in multiple sizes after uploading it. Unfortunately that doesn’t optimize the file size as well, that’s just the display size of the image. Image can be scaled using simple tools like Microsoft paint, Photoscape, etc.

5. 

Reduce file size: The next step in image optimization is to make sure that scaled image is displayed in the smallest possible file size. You can reduce the file size of images by several methods like by removing the EXIF data.

6. 

Add captions: The caption is the text that accompanies the image on the webpage. For most images it is the text in the gray section below it or displayed in a separate div below the but on the image. People use those captions in scanning an article. Right after the headings, people tend to go through the image and take account of the caption as well in their viewing. Captions are not necessarily be added to all images. Sometimes images serve another purpose other than foe SEO optimization. It is important to decide if the image in question is an image you would want to use for SEO or not. Keeping aside image optimization for SEO you should add a caption to make senses to the visitor. You should think about the visitor first and then image optimization.

7. 

Provide alt text and title text: The alt text is the descriptive text for an image that is displayed when the image for some reasons could not be displayed to the visitor. In situations where the image is not displayed to the reader, maybe because they have turned off images in their browser or are due to some visual impairment are using some screen reader, the alternative text ensures helps in preserving the information or functionality of the webpage. Make sure you add alt texts that include your SEO keyword and also relate to or describe the image. The alt tag and title tag is to be added to the tag in the HTML source code of the website.

8. 

Add XML image sitemaps: If you are a website developer, you might be unsure about XML image sitemaps. Google says Adding images to your XML sitemaps help Google index your images. So it is a best practice to add them to sitemap for better image SEO optimization.

Source page - http://www.wikihow.com/Do-Image-Optimization-for-SEO

 

How to Remove Canonical Issue

To remove this problem redirect all urls on single url. Some methods to solve this problem are given below;

Create .htaccess File

 

Redirect WWW to non-WWW

RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} sitesbay.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://sitesbay.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Redirect non-WWW to WWW

RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} sitesbay.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.sitesbay.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

.htaccess: This file is mainly used for redirect url, to create this file you can create any file and save with .htaccess file name.

Note: You can also redirect using cpanel. 

Source page - http://www.sitesbay.com/seo/seo-canonical-issue  

 

What is the canonical issue?

For example if you have the website http://www.example.com then the index page can be accessed from all of the following URLs:

What is the canonical issue?

http://www.example.com
http://www.example.com/index.html
http://example.com
http://example.com/index.html

Source page - https://www.koozai.com/blog/search-marketing/how-to-resolve-the-canonical-issue-on-your-website-927/

Title Tag Optimization

The one which is placed inside a html header tag like the syntax below is title tag.

<head>

<title>……..</title>

</head>

While fetching any webpage, search engines fetch the title tag content and display the same as title in search results as well. Similar behavior will happen during social media sharing.

 Let’s take amazon.com as an example. The one which is pointed below is the title tag of amazon, which can be viewed when you mouse over on the opened tab in any browser. Some browsers like firefox will show you the title tag on the top of the browser itself.

Wonder how it was added? You can even view their web source. Right click on their website, you can see something called “view page source”. On clicking on this, you will be taken to this page. Search as <title> through Ctrl+F, you can view their title tag at once.

The similar behavior also gets reflected in social media as well. When you enter the website’s URL, social media will bring your title tag and displays it to the users.

Why title tag optimization?

Title tag describes about the page to search engines and your users. By having your main keyword in title tag, search engines understand that this page is related to the specific keyword and index it accordingly for respective keyword search results. So it’s a must to focus more and optimize your title tag to get more traffic and visibility to your website.

 From the below screenshot, you can clearly see how results are fetched based on the title tag which is relevant to your search query.

And if you optimized your title tag perfectly and if you provide valid quality content related to the search query, you can also enjoy being treated as special as below.

Have the main keyword prominently placed inside title tag. For example:

Place your main keyword first, followed by your brand name

Main keyword- Brand name

If you have another keyword to focus, you can include it too.

Main keyword, secondary keyword — Brand name

You can see an example screenshot below where primary, secondary keyword and brand name has been highlighted for your reference.

Source Page:- https://medium.com/seo-tips-tricks/seo-html-title-tag-optimization-examples-faqs-best-practices-6e0facc93a

Author Name :-Bharathi Priyaactices-6e0facc93a