How to make your images SEO-friendly

Even if you’re a person that doesn’t use recipes when cooking or baking, you should follow certain steps to make your images SEO-friendly.

If you’ve ever done any cooking or baking, you know that timing and temperature can make a big difference in the success of your dish. Sometimes you can wing it and it will turn out just fine, but other times the wrong temperature or cooking time could result in a ruined dish. That’s a lot of preparation with nothing to show for at the end.

Finding and using quality photos in your articles is like the preparation process in cooking or baking. The prep takes up the majority of your time and effort and makes it possible to put your best work forward.

You could wing it, and upload your photos and hope for the best. However, with the right tweaking you can make your images work for you.

There are a few ways that your images can help give you extra SEO juice. So if you’re someone who “wings it” in the kitchen, you might want to use a different strategy in this area. A little planning and preparation can go a long way.

To do:

When uploading images, first and foremost you need to make sure they’re eye-catching. This doesn’t necessarily help improve your SEO, but it will help the shareability on social media. When you share an article on social media, many networks will pull the first image directly from your article. That’s why it’s important to put some thought and effort into the images you use to accompany your web content.

When uploading your images, use these tactics to help improve your SEO:

• Be descriptive in your file name. You could name it the headline of your article, or another name that uses keywords. Using a name like “10-resources-early-childhood-development” will help your SEO; “IMG_1987” will not.
• Don’t include spaces in the image name. You might be able to upload files with spaces in the file name without a problem, but search engines will not be able to understand the spaces.
• Resize your images to the largest size you will actually use. For example, let’s say the resolution of your photos is 5000×2800 pixels. That high resolution is useful when printing large banners or posters. On the web, it’ll slow your site down. On a blog post, you may use an image that’s 300×180 pixels – a small fraction of the original size. Keep the original photo as-is and upload a resized copy to your website.