Using images on your website and blog not only makes the content more appealing but also helps with Google rankings. In this blog post, we explain how to increase Google rankings with images.

Ways to increase Google rankings with images

Preparing images

Select images

Use images that are relevant to the content and use your own rather than stock images if you can.

Optimise images

Optimise the images for your website. Images can slow down the website loading time which is bad news for your page ranking and off-putting for site visitors. Scale your image and reduce the file size before uploading it to your website. Your image file size should be a maximum of 100Kb.

Choose file name

Save the image with an appropriate file name which includes your keyword. Your main keyword should be at the beginning of the file name. For example, a photo of the outside of a hotel when your keyword is ‘Sidmouth hotel’ could be ‘Sidmouth hotel, hotel name, Sidmouth, Devon’.

Uploading images

Alt text

Alt text is a description of the image. It’s descriptive text which is displayed if the image is not available to the reader. Make sure the alt text includes your keyword and relates to and/or describes the image.

Description and caption

Captions appear beneath the image. You can use them to describe the image. They don’t really help with SEO but can improve the visitor experience as they are easy to read when scanning over an article.

Link images

If relevant, add a link from the image to another page within your site as Google links internal links too.

If you’d like to increase Google ranking with images but don’t have any images check out our blog – 6 free image sources for free image sources.