Are you looking to improve image SEO on wordpress? When properly optimized, image search can bring more new visitors to your site.
To benefit from image SEO, you need to help search engines find your images and index the right keywords.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to optimize image SEO by following the steps below.
Optimize the loading speed
Speed plays an important role in SEO and user experience. Search engines consistently rank websites that have fast loading times. The same is true for image search.
Images will increase your overall page load time. They take longer to download than text, which means that your page will load slower if you use images that are too large.
You need to make sure that the images on your website are optimized for the web. This can be a bit difficult for those who are not experts in graphics and image editing.
We have a helpful guide on how to properly optimize images before uploading them to your site.
The best way to optimize images is to edit them on your computer with photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop. This allows you to select the appropriate file format to create small file sizes.
You can also use image compression plugin for WordPress. These image optimization plugins allow you to automatically reduce file size while uploading images to WordPress.
What is alt text (Alt tag)?
Alt text or tags alt is an HTML attribute that is added to the img tag used to display images on web pages.
<img src = "https://blog.hostvn.net/ ruitbasket.jpeg" alt="A basket of fruit" > |
It allows website owners to describe images in plain text. The main purpose of alt text is to improve accessibility by allowing screen readers to read alternative text for visually impaired users.
Alternative text is also important for image SEO. It helps search engines understand the content of images.
Modern search engines can recognize an image and its content using artificial intelligence. However, it still relies on alternative text that describes the image content.
Alt text also comes with images in Google image search, helping users understand images and improve their chances of getting more visitors.
Typically, alt text does not display on your website. However, if an image is corrupted or cannot be found, your users will be able to see the replacement text with a broken image icon next to it.
Difference between alt text and title
Alternative text is used for accessibility and image SEO, while the title field is used internally by WordPress to search for images in categories. Media.
WordPress inserts the tag alt on the image display code. Title tags are stored in the database to find and display images.
Previously, WordPress also inserted title tags into HTML code. However, that is not an ideal situation from an approach point of view, which is why they eliminate it.
Differences between alt text and image captions
Alt text is used to describe images for search engines and screen readers. On the other hand, captions are used to describe images for all users.
Alternative text does not show up on your site while annotations are displayed below your images.
Alt text is very important in image SEO. Captions are optional and should only be used when you need to provide additional visual information to site visitors.
How to add alt text, titles and captions to images in WordPress
Alternate text, titles, and captions create image metadata that you can add to images when uploading them to WordPress.
When you add images using the default image block, WordPress allows you to add captions and alt text for images.
It automatically creates a title for the image from the file name. You can change the title by clicking the edit button in the image block toolbar.
This will bring up the media uploader popup, where you can enter your own custom title for the image.
Note: Changing the image alt tag or caption via Media will not change it in the posts and pages where the image was used.
When to use captions for images in WordPress
Captions allow you to provide additional details to images for all of your users. They are displayed on the screen for all users including search engines and screen readers.
As you may have noticed, most websites don't often use annotations with images in their blog posts or pages. That is because captions are often not needed to explain an image.
Annotations are more appropriate in the following situations:
- Family photos or events
- Photos need further explanation describing the background story
- Product image gallery
- In most cases, you will be able to explain the image in the content itself.
Disable attachment pages in WordPress
WordPress creates a page for all images you upload. It is called the attached page. This page only displays a larger version of the actual image.
This can have a negative impact on your search rankings. Search engines treat pages with little or no text as low quality or thin content.
This is why we recommend that users disable the attachment pages on your site.
The easiest way to do this is by installing and activating the plugin Yoast SEO. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install WordPress plugins.
When enabled, it will automatically turn off the attached URL. You can also manually disable attachment pages in WordPress by visiting SEO »Search Layout Page and clicking on the tab Media.
From here, make sure that the ‘Media & attachment URLs are set to‘Is on Yes.
If you are not using the Yoast SEO plugin, then you can also do this manually, by adding the following code to the function.php file of the theme you are using:
first 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ten 11 twelfth 13 14 15 16 17 | function wpb_redirect_attachment_to_post() { if ( is_attachment() ) { global $post; if( empty( $post ) ) $post = get_queried_object(); if ($post->post_parent) { $link = get_permalink( $post->post_parent ); wp_redirect( $link, '301' ); exit(); } else { // What to do if parent post is not available wp_redirect( home_url(), '301' ); exit(); } } } add_action( 'template_redirect', 'wpb_redirect_attachment_to_post' ); |
Additional tips to improve image SEO
Add a tag alt Not the only thing you can do to improve image SEO. Here are some additional tips that you should keep in mind when adding images to your blog post.
1. Write descriptive alt text
Many beginners often use only one or two words as alternative text for images. This makes the image too general and difficult to rank.
2. Use a descriptive file name for your image
Instead of saving your images as DSC00434.jpeg, you need to name them properly. Think of the keywords users would enter into a search to find that particular image.
Be more specific and describe in your image file name. For example, red-wood-house.jpeg is better than house.jpeg.
3. Provide context for your image
Search engines are getting smarter every day. They can recognize and classify images quite well. However, they need you to provide context for the image.
Your image needs to be related to the general topic of the article or page. It is also helpful to place images near the most relevant text in your article.
4. Follow the best SEO practices
You also need to follow the overall SEO guidelines for your website. This improves your overall search rankings including image search.
5. Use the original image and image
There are many websites that provide free images that you can use to find images for your blog posts. However, the problem is that these images are used by thousands of websites.
Try to use original photos or create unique quality images for your blog.
We know that most bloggers are not graphic designers. Fortunately, there are some great online tools that you can use to create graphics for your website.
We hope this article helped you learn about image SEO for your website.
According to WPBeginner
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