The 5 Things I Do to Optimize My Article Images for SEO

Images are an important part of any article, not just for keeping a reader engaged, but for SEO purposes as well. Created and added correctly, these can help you rank your article higher.

Every time I write and publish a new article, whether it’s for my website or one of my clients, I always make sure to do these 5 things that I will explain below.

Image size

Before I upload my image on WordPress or whatever CMS I’m using, I make sure that the images are the right size.

First, the featured image. In WordPress, depending on the theme, these will have a recommended size. To find out the one you need, you can either check the theme documentation or simply look at the default images the template has when you first install it.

If you don’t have those anymore, open Chrome and simply go to your main blog page, right-click on an image, and select ‘Inspect’. This will open the Chrome Console, where you can inspect the code on the page. If you hover your mouse over the image name, you will get a panel with some information. What you are interested in is the ‘Intrinsic aspect ratio’. This will remain the same for any place your image is displayed on your website.

In the example below, you can see that the value is 177:100. This is the width and height of the image.

Now, what you want to do is make a conversion so that the width of the image is 1,200 px. This is to find the height. I’ll explain in a minute why.

In this case, for the image to be 1200 px wide, the height needs to be 677,966 px. We can safely round it up to 678 px.

The formula is this:

1200 (Width) X Value 2 (100 in this case) / Value 1 (177 in this case) = Height.

Now, why go through all this trouble, you might ask? For 2 reasons:

1. If you want to add text to an image, and I’ll explain below why you do, you’ll need to know the safe area. If you use an image that is 1,200 px x 900 px, some of the text won’t be visible on the blog category page.

2. You want your image to be at least 1200 px wide for your article to be eligible to be displayed on Google Discover.

If you don’t know what that is, Google Discover is a personalized feed of news articles, videos, and other content that Google curates based on your interests. It’s available on both iOS and Android devices, and it’s integrated into the Google app.

Image File Format

Another important aspect to consider when adding images, featured and in-article, is website loading speed. This impacts both how Google ranks you and your revenue.

The best format you can use is Webp. This is an image format developed by Google that is designed to be a more efficient and versatile alternative to JPEG and PNG. It can achieve smaller file sizes than either of these formats while maintaining image quality (lossless compression). WebP also supports animation and alpha channels.

If you already have a huge image collection on your WordPress website, you can install a plugin to convert them automatically. I use and recommend both Imagefy and ShortPixel, depending on which one is on offer. Both of them also have free versions, best suited if you only have a few images and don’t plan on adding too many new ones each month.

If you don’t run WordPress, or don’t want to use a plugin, there are plenty of online converters out there. I recommend Tiny Img, which also has a free version.

Relevance

What the image is about is just as important as the technical information above.

Obviously, if you’re writing an article about the ‘best cat food’ you’re most likely going to use an image of a cat eating food rather than a lumberjack cutting down a tree.

Besides this, there are other ways you can optimize and let Google know these images are relevant to your content.

The first one is the image name. Instead of 2sddfwr241.webp, use a name that is relevant, like best-cat-food.jpeg. I always use keywords here. For the featured image I use the main keyword of the article, while for the other images I generally use the secondary keywords from the sections I add the image to.

Next we have the image title. Here, I just expand on the keyword. So, for this example, my image title would be ‘The best cat food in USA’.

Lastly, I add an image alt text. The alt text is a text description of the image which helps visually impaired people navigating the web understand what that image is about. As an alt text, I try to use a secondary keyword, while at the same time making a useful alt text. So, for the cat food image, I would use the following text: a cat eating [food brand], considered the best food for cats.

Originality

You've probably heard by now that you should stay away from duplicate content. Well, that doesn’t go just for text, but for images too. For years, many people have relied on stock photos to create a visual representation for their articles.

Stop doing that!

Lately, Google started putting a huge emphasis on original images. And they are right. After all, how can I trust that your best cat food article is based on your own findings if you use stock images? Why didn’t you take a photo of your cat eating that specific food brand?

But what about other article types?

Well, that's even easier.

A screenshot of something is an original image. If you have an article about how easy it is to buy an American Airlines ticket online, you can easily take a few screenshots while going through the process, right? Just make sure you don’t give out your card information to the entire internet!

Another easy thing to do is create an infographic-style image — an image with some text on it. Today, that’s super easy with tools like Canva. Just take the main information from your text and add it to the image in an easy-to-read way. But before you do that, remember to first resize the image as I explained at the beginning of this article.

Position

Lastly, let’s talk about where to position images inside your article.

Images are a great way to break apart a big chunk of text and make it more appealing to the reader. In fact, image positioning is a strategy I use to increase engagement and time on page.

My strategy is pretty simple. I try to position images, and other visual elements, like videos and subheadings, in a way that I never have just a block of text on screen no matter where I am in an article.

In Conclusion

In conclusion, if you want to optimize your images for SEO, start with the image size. Make it at least 1200 px wide so your article is eligible for Google Discover and make sure it has the correct aspect ratio.

Next, use relevant images for your article, and make sure they are original. You can either take images with your phone or use a tool like Canva to create an original infographic-style image.

Next, convert your images to Webp so that they are smaller and load faster and upload them to your website. Don’t forget to use keywords in your image file, title, and alt description.

Lastly, position them in a way so that there’s always a visual element on screen to break up the text to increase reading time and engagement.

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