Adding images to service pages, blog posts, and social media posts creates a vibrant experience for your target audience. But you can’t add just any image for your content to perform well. You need to optimize your images to fit the platform and search requirements.
As the owner of a fence company, you likely have a few questions about the optimization process. What is image optimization in SEO, anyway? Fence Marketing Pros specializes in fence company SEO. So, they developed a brief guide to help you better understand the process.
Are Images Important?
Visual content, like photographs, infographics, gifs, and videos, assists your audience in visualizing what your fence business offers. Sure, you can use words to describe your product, service, and methods. However, visual media allows you to communicate with a broader audience.
Many business owners prefer images over gifs and videos because an image loads more quickly. Site visitors want your content to greet them instantly. The longer they wait for a page to load, the more likely they will navigate elsewhere.
Therefore, images are an integral part of the content you publish. But how does optimization fit into the bigger picture?
What Is Image Optimization in SEO?
Optimization refers to how you improve a given resource. Search engine optimization means improving a digital resource to rank well in search engines like Google. When you optimize your website and the elements it contains, you improve your digital assets’ performance to assist potential customers in finding your fencing business.
What is image optimization in SEO? It is the creative and technical process of selecting, editing, and formatting images to fit your site and serve site visitors. Explore the steps to this process below!
Choosing the Right Images
First, you must source images that fit the page’s or post’s context. Create an image inventory for your fencing business by taking photos at job sites. Before and after photos effectively demonstrate the buyer’s property transformation while displaying how your services improve the property. Use a quality camera as you take pictures.
Alternatively, explore related stock photos, especially for blog or social media posts. However, you should edit these photos to accurately reflect your brand identity. Avoid using raw stock images as much as possible.
Altering an Image
Next, edit your photos as needed. Editing may include:
- Altering the image dimensions via cropping
- Improving the image resolution
- Adding branded details like watermarks, logos, and other unique visual elements
These changes set your image apart from others. A site visitor can identify that a photo belongs to your fencing company and demonstrates your skill level.
Size and Compression
Then, fit the image to your needs by changing the image compression. Upload the smallest and clearest version possible. You want the image to load quickly, fit neatly within the page layout, and appear clear to the viewer.
Image Optimization
An important step in optimizing an image involves changing the file format (JPEG, PNG, WebP) to suit your needs. What are the differences between the most popular file formats?
- SVG: An SVG file allows you to resize a logo or isolated element without losing quality.
- JPEG: This format works best for large, sprawling images. For example, you can use JPEG to illustrate large-scale project photos that may require the page width.
- WebP: This format facilitates detailed, quality images of smaller sizes. You can use WebP in place of PNG and JPEG.
- PNG: Logos and other isolated visual elements use PNG files. If you want to impose a watermark logo on your images, use the PNG format.
- XCF: Like SVG and PNG files, the XCF format allows you to seamlessly edit or resize an image. This format is unique to the open-source editing program GIMP.
Test the page to see how it appears before publishing it. Ensure your image content works properly regardless of the user device by giving each image the “scrset” attribute. This attribute produces responsive images that change to fit the device as needed.
You can also use an image CDN (content delivery network) for smoother and more varied optimization options.
Adding Textual Elements
After you optimize the image size and format, add the appropriate textual elements. Some helpful textual elements frequently implemented with images include:
- Image title: After downloading an image, you’ll probably notice that the file has a name before the format extension (e.g., vinyl-fence-in-green-yard.jpeg). Edit the title to reflect what the image depicts using keywords.
- Alt text: The alt text may appear in place of the image in instances where the image cannot load, allowing the user to grasp what you originally wanted to illustrate.
- Captions: The reader can see the caption alongside the image on the published page. You can add more in-depth information to the caption. If you use captions, you may not need alt text.
The text used with each image should be descriptive and contain SEO keywords where possible.
Using Image Data
Structured data helps search engines identify and label your content. If a searcher browses an image tab for finished fencing projects, they may stumble across your photos. The connected image data will identify it as a part of your fencing products and services with a badge.
Google provides guidelines regarding data here.
Mapping Your Site Content
Site maps demonstrate your site’s structure to search engines, showing them how to read and crawl the information you publish. Crawlers can more easily label and index every element, including videos, images, written elements, and full pages. You can even differentiate between similar elements for better search results.
For example, you published a meme, an infographic, and a photograph under the same format. The site map shows search engines how these files differ and how to index them.
Schedule a Free Consultation With Fence Marketing Pros
What is image optimization in SEO? It is a method that enriches your site visitors’ experiences while making your fencing website more searchable in engines. Discover more content marketing tips from Fence Marketing Pros. You can also schedule a consultation with their experts.
