Want to know what SEO is?
This is a seemingly complicated process shrouded in mystery by SEO experts who know how to make a website high in search results. It turns out, however, that SEO is a relatively simple tool for getting traffic from Google.
You can come across many articles related to SEO on the Internet, which cover many aspects of website optimization for search engines. Some are really good but often written in a language incomprehensible to the average recipient. You don’t have to know the details and conditions in the industry to find out what SEO is (or website positioning).
Knowing and respecting the principles of SEO has long-term benefits that cannot be achieved at such a high level in any other way. Find out how to improve the health of your website and influence its position in the search engine. Learn the fundamental principles of Google positioning. Also, find out which activities to avoid.
A good SEO agency can create a specialized growth plan to identify the best digital advertising channels & sales tactics to generate high quality leads.
When analyzing their website for SEO, owners often try to improve its position in search engines. It seems that all the parameters are in the right place.
In the meantime, for example, with simple negligence, it is easy to omit elements essential to search engines or misconfigure them. Then the website looks great at first glance in terms of SEO, but it can get stuck in a far from the dream position. Inaccurate analysis of SEO data creates many problems. However, it is enough to pay attention to the basic mistakes, often made in passing, for the website to gain value for Google and other robots.
What is the job of a graphic designer?
A graphic designer is a profession that requires creativity, aesthetic sense, and knowledge of computer programs. Due to the development of technology, the work of a graphic designer has changed dramatically in the last half-century.
Graphic Designer – This person deals mainly with the visual layer of projects. It’s someone who can understand graphics programs, design or illustrate, and simply put it all together into a beautiful, coherent whole. However, the project scope, topics, and programs used can be very different.
A graphic designer is an extension of the hand of an art director or client—someone who simply implements other people’s concepts and ideas. As a graphic designer, you will depend entirely on yourself, which team and clients you will find, and how you will further direct your path.
What skills should a graphic designer have?
Neal Taparia, who runs a brain training app called Solitaired, states that graphic designers are not only there to make images look aesthetically pleasing but simple and effective. Essentially, they should help businesses to convey their message more powerfully. Therefore, graphic designers should be able to communicate ideas and create visually.
To do this, they need various skills, such as knowledge in Adobe Creative Suite and the ability to convey the client’s voice. Taparia thinks that an excellent graphic designer is expected to have at least knowledge of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Microsoft’s PowerPoint templates, etc. (although, Adobe programs are still the most used in the industry). InDesign also adds whether the graphic designer will be engaged in delivering flyers or catalogs, or HTML and CSS, whether he will be involved in preparing graphics for websites as part of his work.
Here you can do many things, from the thick internet and print campaigns (print, billboards), packaging design, newsletters, presentations, company documents, branding. The ability to design and work with text is crucial.
Statistics in the US say that in 2020, a graphic designer’s salary was about $ 53,380 or approximately $ 25.66 per hour. What is very interesting is that according to Zippia’s statistics, over 118,080 graphic designers are employed in the USA.
As Brain Reed once said, “Everything is designed. Few things are well thought out. ”
The job of a graphic designer is not for everyone. Not everyone can have a good sense of graphics and drawing.
Why is SEO important in the work of a graphic designer?
When we think about increasing the traffic on a website, we usually focus on the website’s position in the ranking of websites and on all external activities – AdWords, social networks, etc.
If your site has many interesting photos, you can get extra traffic by optimizing them properly. Plus, you can use a powerful SEO task manager to ensure that your image optimization efforts are systematic and effective.
Managing photos on a website are not just uploading them to a website directly from the camera. Instead, you can do many things around them to make your photos start building traffic through Google Images.
Therefore, it can be assumed that SEO image optimization is such a thing.
In this post, you will, among other things, learn:
- why proper file naming is essential
- what are the benefits of images compression
- how – depending on the situation – to choose the appropriate file extensions
- what is the role of the graphical ALT attribute
- some other interesting issues related to image management on the website
So, let’s get to the point.
4 Tips for Customizing and Optimizing Your SEO Image
1. Consider the usefulness of photo data and graphics.
The role of images is to build a message and create an impression. They often supplement the text, enriching it through a visual experience.
On the pages of our blog, we often mention that the visual message reaches us much faster than the purely textual one.
Therefore, when you decide to include any graphics on your website, carefully consider their role.
An example would be photos of products in an online store. This is a rather specific type of image because the possible boost in sales largely depends on them.
Among other things, the shots from different angles and their presentation on a white background and in everyday use should stand out. Therefore, it is also vital that you enlarge selected fragments of the photo to see the desired details.
As you can see, the whole context and all the features that should accompany the photos are very important. Of course, they depend on the specific website. But adding images simply needs to be based on a well-thought-out philosophy.
2. Select the appropriate file formats.
There is a reason why many image file formats are used: PNG, JPG, GIF, SVG, etc. The diversity of technologies stems from the fact that not all are suitable for all types of images.
JPG, GIF, PNG
JPG files should be used for all graphics with a wide range of colors. Photos are a perfect example. Thanks to JPG, we can determine the image quality, where a level of about 70% usually allows us to achieve satisfactory quality with relatively reduced file weight.
On the other hand, the GIF format limits us to a color palette with a maximum of 256 colors. This makes GIFs unsuitable for complex graphics. On the other hand, it is ideal for all icons and images, where we do not have to use many colors – logos, flags, etc. Finally, it is worth adding that animations can also be saved in GIF format.
PNG is divided into two types: PNG-8 version and PNG-24 version.
The first is very similar to GIF. Although it doesn’t offer animation, it works better with transparency and allows you to get smaller files.
PNG-24 is similar to JPG, but it is characterized by one very important feature – no loss of quality. Thanks to that, we can get beautiful graphics, but the larger the color palette, the larger the file size. PNG is commonly used for graphics published on the web and those that use transparency.
Fun fact: there is another such thing as APNG or animated portable network graphics. This format is still quite experimental, but Google Chrome has supported it since July 2017.
It is also worth mentioning that SVG- vector format is utterly different from the previously mentioned one. Ideal for logos and simple graphics that are almost “geometric,” i.e., contain different types of round or angular shapes.
To sum up, the format is like a dress – it should be chosen according to the occasion.
3. Make sure the file names are correct.
This point clearly explains why SEO image optimization is extremely important. Here is a simple example.
If you can see the contents of the folder in which you have (in the list view, no thumbnails) files such as:
IMG_0001.JPG
IMG_0002.JPG
IMG_0003.JPG etc.
Can you tell us in advance what the content of these pictures is?
Of course not. The situation is completely different, such as:
Samsung-galaxy-s9-front.JPG
Infiniti-kk-70-interior.JPG
svadba-tomek-kasia-crkva.JPG
In the cases mentioned above, the name itself can tell us what is inside.
Image files should be named adequately to the content because such action is friendly for us users and search engine robots.
You’ll probably ask yourself, “What about when I have to put a few dozen graphics online?” Then I answer Bulk Rename Utility.
Bulk Rename Utility is a simple program that allows you to manage multiple files’ names simultaneously. For example, in the image above, you can see how several files have been renamed with the help of three options.
This program will save you a lot of time if your task is to rename multiple files simultaneously.
4. Determine the optimal dimensions of the images.
What is the ideal size of a work of art? Nobody will unequivocally answer this question because everything depends on the specific case. The right balance between quality and size is essential because they are directly proportional.
The needs of your customers should guide you. Serve them with pictures of good enough quality.
Suppose you are a photographer, upload thumbnails to the website (custom areas where they are displayed). Then, just clicking on a small image (i.e., performing an action) should result in opening a larger or even full version in the original resolution.
It has many benefits, including saving time for downloading photos and reducing the amount of data used in the first place.
Visual Layout of the Page
The visual appearance of a website is just as important to its success as the content it publishes. These are exciting graphics that attract the reader’s attention, focusing on the most important elements of the page, the most interesting products, or the most critical information that we want to convey to the recipient.
It doesn’t matter if it is a blog post, a company offers, or an article on an external portal. Without properly selected photos, it is challenging to expect maximum success in a company that focuses on noticeable information due to the abundance of available data. In addition, graphics are not only an influence on the reader’s imagination. But they are also an effective positioning tool. So how do you describe images to be more in Google and increase the reach of the web page?
Graphics and photos published on the website must correspond to its context. Thematically selected graphics will have a better chance of improving your site’s visibility because they will satisfy the essential principle for the search engine. They will be helpful and enrich the content.
In the case of articles or product subpages, photos should always be in the most visible place. For example, next to the text to which they are linked.
In technical matters, however, it will be necessary:
- Add ALT parameter
- Appropriate nomenclature of photographs
- Graphic size optimization
- Complete the extended descriptions, i.e., the rich snippet
- Adding an ALT parameter is crucial.
It is good to include a key phrase here, but only if it refers to what is in the picture. In case of problems with loading the image, it will provide users with information about what is in the photo. It is a concise verbal description, which contains the most important information. It is also used by search engines intended for blind and partially sighted people. So make sure it’s updated!
Appropriate nomenclature of photographs. As with positioning PDF files, the graphic in the title must contain a keyword. It is also often necessary to reduce the size of the graphics, especially in the case of stores, where there can be many photos of products. The more of them, the slower the page can load.
Be sure to optimize the graphics so that they are not of low quality at the same time. Large files cause the site to load slowly, which reduces its quality. This has a substantial impact on the position of the page in Google. The slower it loads, the less user-friendly it is. So Google will not highlight it in search results. Page loading speed is very important for mobile users.
Graphics Optimization for SEO
The human eye can easily distinguish a photo of a small cat from a graphic that represents statistics, allowing assessing whether the information in the photo is valuable to the reader and whether it matches the other content on the page correctly. However, search engine robots are not the best at this and still face problems recognizing the content of images on a website. For example, they know that there is a graphic file between the following paragraphs, although their content is a mystery.
From the point of view of website code, this does not look good. Poorly described graphics will not only not help with positioning, but even reduce the effect of the effort invested in building the ranking of the website on Google. So what can be done to prevent this?
What are the common SEO mistakes?
First of all, you should be aware of the importance of proper graphics preparation in positioning. According to information published by raventools.com on the most common SEO mistakes, as much as 63.4% of internet content consists of images. This perfectly confirms the theory that photographs or even abstract graphics affect users much more than a compact text block. However, the same statistics show that as many as 78% of all SEO problems are related to improper image optimization.
Thanks to photos, we know the topic of a given page faster. We also make safer decisions about buying a given product. First, however, we have to find the given page as the user. Therefore, searching through photos is often the easiest way. So, positioning graphics should be taken as seriously as possible from the point of view of SEO. After all, thanks to the appropriate attributes, graphic designers and web developers can use the specific attributes of graphics on a page to help them rank higher in search engines.
How to describe images to be more visible on Google – the most important aspects of positioning photos and graphics?
To properly take care of the proper visibility of graphics on the website and prepare it for display not only to readers but also search engine robots, it is worth paying attention to elements such as:
- Image filename
- Graphic size and weight
- Scaling graphics
- Alt attribute
- Graphic title
- Friendly URL
Is the image file name important for SEO?
The file’s name on the server is important for both the user and the browser, especially when the image is intended to be downloaded.
It will be much harder to assign a file named 2651a0hd.jpg to the appropriate category for the browser if it shows shoes or a bag. Therefore, it is worth including keywords in the title, clearly indicating what the image on the website represents.
Graphic Size and Weight
First of all, the photos on the site should be of the highest possible quality. But that does not mean for that reason, they should be heavy and oversized. The larger the image file, the longer the page load time, obviously not applicable to its optimization. Before you upload an image to the server, it is good to convert it to reduce the image size without any deterioration.
How big should the converted graphics be? Preferably as small as possible, but still legible to the user. The most common rule is to limit the weight of images to 200 KB and .png extensions instead of .jpg for charts, graphics, and screenshots, in which we care about the highest quality.
Final Thoughts
Scott Stevenson said, “Visual design is often the opposite of engineering: it turns solid edges into subjective decisions based on primitive instincts and personal experiences. It is dirty, unpredictable, and complicated to measure. The seemingly erratic behavior of the artist drives the engineers crazy. Their decisions seem arbitrary and put everything in danger without guaranteeing success.”
For this reason, graphic designers must know how to manage SEO.
