We’ve all heard from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) professionals wax on about how to optimize images once they get onto a website. But the common pitfall is not adding anything unique with relevance to your page topic.
While it’s easy to take a stock image and just slap it on the page, there’s no value to Google or actual people. So, how can anyone get distinctive images and optimize them before it gets onto the website?
In the good old days, you’d hire a full-time designer and let their creativity do the legwork through illustrations. But, since we’re in a recession and agencies let go of creatives first, now SEOs need to step up.
Yes, it’s another step in the process, but it’s a skill and we all love learning (I hope).
Image SEO Best Practices
Most SEOs have the same advice for visuals, namely these for image optimization:
- Create unique images for better user experience and SEO;
- Be aware of copyright issues and only use images you have edited;
- Use descriptive image file names that contain your search query;
- Use BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, SVG, or AVIF formats;
- Compress image file sizes and use responsive ones;
- Optimize your image landing pages (image alt text, title, description, structured data);
- Use structured data to help Google understand your images;
- Define image dimensions to prevent layout shifts;
- Use lazy loading and preloading for faster page load times;
- Use HTML & sitemaps to help Google find your images;
- Use <img> elements to embed images, not Cascading Style Sheets (CSS);
- Submit an image sitemap to Google;
- Use <picture> or srcset for responsive images;
- Add images to your HTML sitemap for better indexing;
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to serve images faster.
What’s Wrong With Being Typical?
The Google image search engine is an untapped resource for many SEOs because they forget its algorithm is unique. Search engines can read text on images and even identify the text on them. So, you can probably leverage the results of your site to have a bigger footprint when you leverage optimization best practices and high-quality images on your site.
Plus, you’re getting extra eyes on your branding. What’s not to love about gaining another platform and set of clicks from filling an untapped market with your webpages and social posts?
Why Should I Customize Images for Search Engines?
In recent months, Google and other search engines have pushed people-first optimization through creating helpful content. But, since 91% of consumers prefer visuals over plain text, it’s vital to include images in your marketing strategy.
Moreover, the days of taking images straight from popular searches for your queries are over. If you want to get to the top of text and visual search, you’ve got to expand your focus past generic stock images.
As a designer of over ten years, I will walk you through some of the easiest ways to start leveraging your images to push the branding of your site.
Pros of Using Unique Images in SEO
Using unique images in content provides several important advantages for SEO, from improving user experience to enhancing search engine rankings and solidifying brand identity.
These benefits make distinctive images a valuable asset in any SEO strategy, helping improve user engagement, search performance, and brand strength.
Cons of Customized Images
While custom images can elevate your brand and improve SEO, they come with certain challenges that are worth considering. These can include higher time and cost investments, technical complexities, legal concerns, and accessibility issues.
To address these challenges, consider balancing custom and stock images. Stock images can save time and cut costs while still meeting basic visual needs, allowing you to reserve custom images for unique, brand-specific content. This mix can help manage resources effectively while still offering the branding benefits of customized visuals.
How to Make Your Own Images
Creating your own images can elevate your content, reinforce your brand, and boost your SEO efforts. Instead of trying to find the right image, find something that fits and then customize.
By crafting original visuals, you can tailor each image to fit your message and audience perfectly. Custom images are especially effective in setting your website apart from competitors using generic photos.
While you don’t need to copy competitors entirely in your niche, understanding what your intended audience is used to can help you start on a high note.
- Graphics – single pictures that are usually 2-dimensional (flat) and a single color as a minimalist icon.
- Fonts – type in headlines and change the text style.
- Colors – note how many and how often they repeat.
- Layouts – note how the competition puts things across an image. Layouts refer to how elements like text, images, and icons are arranged.
Once you’ve got a list, it’s time to work on some draft designs. I recommend Canva, Adobe Express, or similar web-based apps.
Once you’re happy with your imitation, take the elements you like and play around with them. Change the composition, add more graphics, remove graphics, size up your text, and then size it down.Note: Composition is a graphic design term often used to refer to the arrangement of elements within an image. It may help to specify that it’s about the visual structure and organization of image parts.
When developing a visual identity, you need to keep things consistent. Your first step is picking an image size that you can easily scale and fit your platform.
Pro tip: Consistent image size also makes your layout easier to format. Instead of slowing down the server with extra CSS and HTML, the “one size fits any” format makes my load speed quicker. Thereby giving me more bandwidth to consider the content and search queries I need to answer.
Note: A Typeface is a style of lettering, while a Font is the variations of the Typeface in terms of size and weighting.Note: fonts are subjective. So again, remove your personal opinions from design before you alienate your intended audience. If you can’t see it, bring in other people to help you pick something.
Successful designs leverage photography principles. These almost always include the rule of thirds, visual hierarchy, and placing some things (not all) symmetrically.
Note: The rule of thirds involves dividing an image into three equal parts, horizontally and vertically, to place the main elements along these lines for a more balanced look.
Once you’ve done the rough shifts, pick two elements and align them.
Align your pieces to an edge to create a balance and direct people through it so they focus on your image.
Bonus Tips for Optimizing Images
- Limited Color Palette – pick 3 main colors that compliment each other as a theme.
- Up the Contrast – use one dark color with a mid-tone and a bright tone.
- Brighten & Lighten – use variations of brighter/darker colors to create a unified look.
- Use Supporting Elements – pick one graphic for your topic, then support it with smaller images and icons to add visual context.
Final Tips for Creating Effective Custom Images
- Relevance: ensure your images relate to the content of your webpage.
- Visual Appeal: eye-catching photos, graphics, and other elements capture attention and engagement.
- Standardize Size And Format: use web-appropriate formats and compress the result before uploading.
- Descriptive File Names: use relevant keywords in your file names.
- Alt Text: add relevant search queries and variations into your alt and title tags.
- Responsiveness: double-check that your images scale on multiple devices.
Wrapping Up
While these tips are meant as a guide, there are no hard and fast rules for design. Make it appealing and related to your topic, then go ham with whatever appeals.
Lay it out, tweak it, then download it once it’s almost perfect. We aren’t robots, so we’re comfortable with a little bit of chaos. But, make one image per 300 words of text and use it to highlight important information.
