SEO for images is one of the main things I teach to my clients once I finish designing their new websites.

Since many of my projects are for creative entrepreneurs and sometimes they don’t even have a blog; they really need to stress on SEO for images to get found on Google and other search engines.

As you may already know, Google does not read images yet. I’m sure they will surprise us soon, but for now we need to help them as much as we can.
Because at the end we want them to help us get in the eyes of potential clients, right? So let’s collab with the big guys!

Today I will give you four simple but super helpful advices. Easy to follow steps that you need to do ALWAYS.

1. Save images for web

Saving your images for web is very important for SEO and also for user experience. To do so I always use Photoshop. It’s as easy as opening the image and clicking on “File > Save for Web & Devices…” and select the .jpg format with a quality between 50% and 80%.
You also need to resize your images. For normal blog posts you will not need more than 900px width but if you are using that image full width then save it at 2000px wide.

2. Use keywords on your image names

Before uploading your images to your website, take the time to edit their names in your computer. Google and other search engines will look at your image name to know if it’s a good fit for their users, so be sure to not keep the random numbers and letters from your camera such as DC_1237.jpg
Instead, think about descriptive keywords and combine them to create unique names.
Some important notes:
– Do not use spaces (you can use dashes to separate words)
– Do not use special characters like “,`,/,&…
– Do not use dots

3. The alternate text: your new best friend

WordPress and other CMS platforms will easily allow you to edit the alternative text of your images. This is the most important field to fill!
The alternative (alt text) field will display in case the browser can’t show your image, but it is also the default text that Pinterest uses as description when someone posts from your website.
Knowing so, use your best copy here. Remember to use keywords, add some Call To Action and even links if you want!

4. Add keywords to the description text

Another important field is the description text. Here you can also describe your image and the post where it is located.
It is good to repeat some of the keywords from the image title and alt text

Here you can see an example for the following image:

Since it is a wedding invitation image with watercolor illustrations I will use these kind of keywords to describe everything about it:
Title: watercolor-wedding-invitations-graphicdesign-loversloveloving-01.jpg
Alt text: Watercolor Wedding Invitations designed by Claudia Orengo from www.loversloveloving.com
Description: Custom watercolor wedding invitations designed by Claudia Orengo

Note that the caption field is the only text that will display next to your image, so although you want a descriptive text to appear next to your photography, I recommend you to leave it empty.

With these easy tips your images will become very appealing to Google and Pinterest when people search for your keywords.
It is essential to follow these steps for any image you upload to your portfolios, blog posts, banner slides, etc…

I would love to know if that was useful for you or not. Please let me know in the comments below if you have any doubt about it!