Image SEO: The 2021 Guide To Optimize Images for Blog Post SEO

When we talk about SEO(Search Engine Optimisation) on our Blog, Most of the people knows a Good Title, Meta Description & Linking is enough to Rank our Blog post on google. But the truth is Image SEO also has importance on every SEO Strategy. There are lots of Tips, Tricks & Techniques to do on every image of your blog.

Doing on-page SEO is really tough to understand what to do & whatnot. Image SEO can improve your search ranking by 20% on Google & Other Search engine platforms. Learn How to make your images SEO Friendly & Speed Optimize With RipoN(BloggingMafia).

Thumbnail of Image SEO Blog post

ULTIMATE Guide To IMAGE SEO

Now let’s get started with all the Tips & Tricks I used for Making my Blog’s Images SEO friendly. Do read carefully otherwise you can miss any important part of our guidelines.

What Will You Get

  • Will Improve Your Ranking.
  • Improve Your Site Speed Loading Time.
  • You will Learn Another SEO Secret from RipoN.

Image SEO Infographics Table


Use Relevant Images

One image is equal to a thousand words. Its Fact that 70% of Bloggers & Writers never use proper images to their blog post. This is really a big mistake for you. By adding images to your post you can engage your readers by 300% more than simple contextual tex. Human eyes love to watch graphical content, So if you are not doing proper image implementation Then you will lose a huge opportunity to grave more potential readers for your blog.

Now Question is how to find images? As you know we can’t use any images from google. Images may be copyright protected by the owner, So let me tell you how & where you will find lots of Copyright-free images.

Guide to user Perfect & Relevant Images

Use Copyright Free Images

I personally use Canva & a Website to collect good images for my web post. Canva is a great web Application for photo editors & Content writers. It provides you to make hundreds of photo templates like Presentation, thumbnail, Status, Posters & many more.

Canva.com

Canva Templates

Not only this you can also search for your needed image on canva photos. There are both premium & Free photos available to use at any time on your blog.

Choose any photo & click on Edit, Yes Canva also has inbuilt Photo editor & That’s Really Cool for everyone like me. No need to use photoshop for editing quick images.

Carefully choose the purpose of the image, so that it will be easy for you to choose the correct image for your blog post.

on the next page, you will get lots of editing features. like Text editing, Watermarking, Element design, Background changing and many more.

This is a screenshot of canva.com editing tool
Canva Editor

Now there is not only one site to get Free images. Canva is my personal Favourite, it’s completely free, you can go with their paid subscription to access all the premium photos.

AllFreePhotos.net

AllFreePhotos.net

Now Talk about other Free images site, my second favourite is AllFreePhotos.net. This site is amazing & the main reason to mention this site is a Hub of every Free Photo providing sites. More than 35+ Popular Image site’s content assembled in one place.

  • PEXELS
  • PIXABAY
  • PICJUMBO
  • UNSPLASH
  • STARTUP STOCK PHOTOS
  • DESIGNERS PICS
  • NEW OLD STOCK

Use Self Created Graphic Images

This another great way to get 101% Copyright Free images. Only you need to have a bit of knowledge on editing images on Photo editor. By your choice, you can create any type of images & Graphic on behalf of your content.

When Free Image sites failed to provide relevant images I used my photo editor to make creative artwork for my blog.

You just need a photo editor & some Background images also you can use a blank photo to design. One more thing you can add PNG Images to add a shape on your graphic.

For PC I used PhotoScape for editing any images, you can also use other photo editors ex: Photoshop.

For Mobile, I used an Application since 2014 called “Photo editor” also you can use popular apps like Picsart, Lightroom or anything else.

Now expand more about self-editing images.

Download Some Background Images

First of all, use some Background images to edit on. You can use Gradient Backgrounds for better attraction. Nowadays many brands use Gradient colour everywhere like Smartphone Background & all.

I especially use uiGradients.com site to get relevant background images.

if you follow me on YoUtube then you will be noticed that every thumbnail of my YouTube Videos has an attractive colour Gradient background image.

Also, you can use Balck or White background images for editing. it depends on you how you will create your artwork.

Use PNG Clip-Arts

When it comes to creating informative infographic or photos, You must use some PNG Clip arts. It will add lots of information to your photo & Thumbnail, Also will attract more people when your blog post or image shared on Social media.

Every impression is important, and it’s your duty to convert most impressions into a clicks.

RIPON

There are lots of sites claimed to provide PNG Images, But if you aske me which one is best for you, then the answer is KissPNG.com (KissPNG is now moved to CleanPNG.com). This is one of the most popular websites in the

Screenshot of cleanpng.com
CleanPNG Homepage

See Blow Example of my Photo Editing.

example of image of photo editting

Now I think you learn a lot of things about how to use Relevant Images on your blog post.

Now let’s move on the next Tips that is Picking a good filename of your image.


Rename Your Image Title in a Right way

it is very important to give a good name of your image. Many people doing a common mistake that they never changed the Image file name before uploading on Website.

Now the question is how & what is the right way to rename an image file name?

Guide to Rename Image title

We download images from various sources also sometimes we take screenshots, but the problem is we don’t look at the image title almost every time. This is the first SEO Mistake on Image SEO, So you need to fix that.

First of all, rename your image title with proper description. For example, if your current image title name is

Screenshot 2019-09-07 at 8.23.13 PM.jpg

Then you should change in to like this-

MS-Dhoni-Quotes.jpg

example renaming Image Title for SEO
The perfect way of renaming Image Title

Tips: Try to include Targeted or Related keyword in the image title of your content for better SEO.


Image Dimensions

image dimensions mean the pixel size of the displayed photo size. This is really important when you are going to export the image size. Many people doing mistake by exporting very high dimension images. The more high resolution make the image file size(MB) bigger.

Now the question is What should be the right Dimensions of Blog Thumbnail & others Images.

Guide to Choosing Right Image Dimensions

There is no ideal image size to use on the blog post, but we have to adjust as the purpose of using images on articles.

below I try to share my ideas of using Image Dimensions in different places.

Thumbnail

when it comes on the thumbnail I always use 16:9 ratio images. There is 2 ideal size that most of the people use for their thumbnail image size.

  1. 1920x1080p
  2. 1280x720p

In-Article

When it comes on uploading images in the article then there is no single Dimension to use. As you saw above I have used many types of images. But personally, I maintained the maximum wide is 1000px for every landscape images. For Portrait photos the maximum wide is 500px.

However, it totally depends on the Image you use to. Also, you can take help of Canva to know different Templates sizes.


Reduce file size for faster loading

Your Blog’s Page Loading Speed is most important in SEO. Faster Page loading improves User Bounce rate.

result of Google page speed
Page speed after Reduced Image size of a blog post

Are you shocked? By seeing My blog post Speed on above screenshot? You can also your blog faster.

I know you think I shall tell you to use WP Plugins? Not at all, dude. No need to use any third-party plugin.

Now The Question is How to Reduce the file size of images?

Guide to Reduce file size for faster loading

After exporting your image You have to reduce file size to the actual size that can handle your server & also match the Google recommendation file size.

You have to reduce blog post images below 100Kb size for better IMAGE SEO to load faster on Mobilee & PC Device both.

To compress images I use an online tool called Compressjpeg.com

Blive me this site has Magical power. If you upload an image of 1080p with 800Kb file size, This site compresses your image up-to 90% without losing image quality.

compressing image with Online tool
Result After compressing some images

I have used soo many Plugins, Softwares & Online web tool but no one can beat.

Tips: Always try to use .jpg format images.

Now your image ready to upload & use on your Article.


Image alt text

Alt text (alternative text) is a word or phrase that can be inserted as an attribute in an HTML document to tell Web site viewers & Search engine crawlers the nature or contents of an image.

You may know we have to write a Meta description of every Article to tell search engines about our content in 160 characters. Seems Alt Text is a Meta description for an image.

Now the question is how to write perfect Alt text of an image?

Guide to Image Alt Text for SEO

This very simple to write alt text of an image, you just have to describe what the image contains & What type of image you are using.

Also, you can follow canva & other stock image sites to get more example of alt text.

let me share you some example

This is an Example of Image Alt Text

Image Alt Text Example

Add Image Caption

Adding a caption to an image is really helpful between Author & readers. A Caption is to define what you want to say visitors by adding this image.

As you can see I have added captions on every image on this post.

Difference between Alt text & Caption

If you think that Alt text & Caption are similar then you are totally wrong. Alt-text is a description of image content, and the Caption is what you are trying to tell people by showing them an image.

Benefits of Caption

Ther is no huge Benefits of using Captions under the image, But it is important to use. Because many browser & reader applications have a feature called ‘only Text View’ or ‘reading mode only’. image captions will help them while they are using that type of reading mode.

So it’s minor but important to use a caption to each & every image you upload on your blog post for god image SEO friendly.


Last but not the least is Using images in XML sitemaps.

Use images in your XML sitemaps

As you know to crawl our website content we have to create a sitemap.xml file of our blog. A sitemap helps crawlers to index our links on search engine database.

We always creat sitemap for our blog post but forgot about that valuable images. After giving our valuable time on optimizing Image for SEO Friendly, if we do not generate a separate sitemap. All the hard work waste of time.

So make sure you have generated a proper sitemap of your images.

How to Make Image XML Sitemap?

if you are using WordPress then there are many plugins available to generate image sitemap. Yoast & Jetpack(recommended) are the best plugins among them.

If you are using Yoast SEO plugin then you have to enable it from Yoast SEO Settings. Go to SEO>Search Appearance and select Media tab. You will see an option to check on Yes & save. See below screenshot.

Screenshot of a setting in Yoast SEO Plugin

in Jetpack plugin just go to Jetpack>Settings>Sitemap and enable the sitemap. I personally recommend using this sitemap for proper image XML sitemap.

This is Screenshot of XML Image Sitemap generated by Jetpack plugin
XML Image Sitemap of jetpack

Now you have completedly done every SEO Settings of your image.

Conclusion

I Know its long for each & every image to do such as all SEO technique, but there is no other option. If you are realy serious about SEO Then you have to do all Image SEO I have mentioned above in This Article. By doing regular practice you will be a Pro on it.

Also, Let me know after doing all of these image SEO settings on Your blog. What changes you will see in the search result.

I have been experienced about 5 years of blogging journey, And try to share some SEO Tips & Tricks through this Blog.

Feel Free to ask any question in the comment box below. I will be waiting for your Feedback.

Thank You!

Categories SEO

24 thoughts on “Image SEO: The 2021 Guide To Optimize Images for Blog Post SEO”

  1. Ripon Bro your all posts & youtube videos are very informative. Following your YouTube since last year learn many SEO techniques. Thanks for all your informative videos.

    Reply
  2. Hai bro, well written. Heavily helpful and thank you for the information.
    I am planning to start an informative blog on blogger as an initiative. Can I get any money benefit from blogger?
    Are all these stock image sites mentioned in this post copyright free?

    Reply
  3. Hey, thank you a lot for sharing this article with us.I hope you will publish such articles in the future as well. It’s so helpful. Goodbye! Take a look at this wonderful article.
    (YT Fan)

    Reply

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