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How To Do Image SEO (3 Tips for Beginners)

Photo SEO is intentionally using all aspects of the photo to make your website more appealing to Google's algorithms.

You're Ready to Add Photos to Your Website, But How Do You Optimize Them for Search Engines?

This article contains the basic SEO actions that you must take on every photo that is uploaded to your site.

1) Give Your Photo an Intentional File Name

A (baby) photography beginner who doesn't know how to do basic photograph SEO.
This is the easiest good image SEO practice you can get into. It is simple, but necessary.

If you're reading this article, chances are you've been optimizing your whole site. This means that every section of every page has its own distinct idea and it likely has its own long-tail keyword associated with it. You want to insert this keyword in a human-readable way into the file name. The name for the picture above this section might be, "photograph-seo-for-beginners.jpeg." Google reads the file name to understand the context of the page. This is invaluable when you are trying to rank well for a specific keyword and topic.

2) The Alt Attribute is Your Best Friend

A person who cannot see. You must provide alt attributes so that they can gain understanding about the images on your web page.
Use an alt attribute to describe what's happening in the photo. If the image cannot be displayed, the alt text will be displayed instead.

Not only is an alt attribute required for valid html, it is also required by the ADA for accessibility. A good rule of thumb is to make the image descriptive of the information it conveys. Include long-tail keywords at the beginning of the text if you can, but prioritize making it understandable to humans. You insert the alt attribute into your image tag, notated like this: alt="ALT TEXT HERE".

3) The Figure & Figcaption Tags are Essential

Figure and Figcaption tags tell Google about Your Image
This caption was brough to you by the figcaption tag. You can format how your captions look by using CSS. For example, I wanted my captions to be tiny!

The figure tag and figcaption (figurecaption) tag are additional opportunities to provide context to your image. Before the img tag, use a figure tag with a label attribute (with a unique label, e.g. figure1, figure 2, etc). Insert your figcaption tag after your img tag and use it as a caption for the image (use your relevant long-tail keyword if possible). The closing figure tag should go after the figcaption tag. All of this structure is there to inform search engines about your image.
Note: Keep in mind that figcaption is always visible to the user, so it needs to be written to be read by human-beings.



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Gabrielle G.
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