Click here for your Ultimate Guide to Making Money with Keywords

Image optimization is a sweet way to turn eye-candy into an SEO delight. More than a visual way to break up text, pictures tucked neatly into your blog post can add a boost to search engine rankings. Here's how:

Choosing the Right Image

More than eye-candy, image optimization can add a sweet boost to SEO.

Select a picture that directly ties into and supports your story.

We are in a generation of skimmers. People are more likely to scan a blog post than they are to read the words in their entirety.

Using images to support your blog's topic, as well as to break up text into skim-able bits, enhances your post's readability.

Pictures are more than a treat for the eye. Image optimization is a smart way to squeeze the nectar out of SEO. Here's another tidbit:

What's in a Name?

Which is more attractive to you: "DSC_1137.jpg" or "Infographic for image optimization"?

The first option tells you nothing and can leave a sour taste in your mouth. The second is descriptive as well as easy to identify in your image sitemap or photo library. Your image file name can also house your keyword or keyword phrase, adding an extra boost of flavor to your SEO.

You may also enjoy: Real Estate Images | 5 Stock Photo Resources for Real Estate Agents

Size Matters

There are many reasons you should resize your images.

• Large images can drastically slow your page speed, which could cause viewers to become impatient and click away from your website.

• Images that are too big can look bulky and unattractive inside of a blog post.

• Improperly sized images can make your website's theme go wonky.

• Uniformed photographs, or pictures that are all the same size or close to size, tie a blog post together in a way that's pleasing to the eye.

Image format can also weigh down a blog post. JPG is the most common, but other types may be implemented depending on the picture style.

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Alt Text

Image optimization includes file name, description, format, size, alt text, and captions.

Alt text is a natural description of what's in the image. For example, "Man using a laptop working on image optimization."

Why is alt text necessary for image optimization?

• Alt Text provides image descriptions to web users with visual impairments who rely on audible resources to browse the Internet.

• Web viewers can read the alt text when hovering their mouse over the image. Your image alt text can reinforce your blog's topic and support the picture caption.

• Google recognizes the alt text in a search, allowing Google to display that image for related search queries. When you do a Google search, your results include websites with relevant keywords, but also includes images. Your alt text is how Google recognizes your image for search results. When you leave the alt text blank, there's nothing for Google to understand about your image.

However, you should never stuff keywords unnaturally into alt text. Once upon a time, web publishers abused alt text for keyword stuffing. For example, if the keyword was "airplane", the alt text could be wrongfully stuffed with terms such as airplane, aircraft, plane, flight, travel. Google now recognizes keyword stuffing as intentional manipulation and will penalize websites who cram keywords into places the don't belong.

You may also enjoy: Website Optimization Using Yoast SEO

Captions

Where alt text is displayed when a mouse hovers over an image, a caption shown below the picture in plain sight.

Because we live in an age of skimming, captions are the next best thing to headings and subheadings. A person aiming for a quick digest of your post will scan between headlines and image captions.

The caption below the picture can also include keywords or keyword phrases to reinforce your post's SEO.

Also Selected for You: How to Search Engine Optimize a Blog Post

Placement

Whether you choose to align your pictures left, right, centered, or not at all is a matter of personal preference. However, the way you place your images could influence - positively or negatively - the way viewers perceive your content.

Many web publishers opt to rotate alignment from left to right as a guide the viewer can follow. Others prefer the images smack dab in the middle of their post.

Either way, you should place appropriate images in or around the part of the blog post to which they pertain.

You may also enjoy: SEO Definitions | About Search Engine Optimization

Summing it Up

Contrary to the previous use of images as eye-candy, pictures in blog posts can tremendously increase SEO value. By using correlating images, proper file names, natural alt text, creative captions, responsive size and format, and thoughtful placement, image optimization can increase your Google juice and positively influence how your page ranks in search.

Click here for your Ultimate Guide to Making Money with Keywords

Bonus Video for Image Optimization

 

Ready for your SEO Opportunity Report? We can help! Give us a call at 702-917-0755 or email team@ballenbrands.com.

You may not be familiar with Lori Ballen, Ballen Brands, or The Ballen Method - but I’m almost certain one of your respected professional peers is. Someone you know likely knows my name. Talk to your associates, your friends in real estate, and ask what they know about the Ballen name. I’m confident you’ll be intrigued. My reputation wasn’t crafted by accident, irony, chance, or luck. I earned respect (and rewards!) the hard way. Using the stepping stones I’ve spent more than a decade constructing, you, too, can build your success story in business. I share my failures (and my win/wins!) to help you succeed.

 

Long before 2010, I was a business owner faithfully (and sometimes embarrassingly!) practicing my motto, “fail forward”. I built millions in various business ventures, and I threw millions away through haphazard mistakes, dangerous habits, and bad choices. Although I lost millions, no one can subtract experience. The valuable lessons I learned were engrained in my being. My marriage was also on the brink of disaster. But my husband and I held on by the tattered threads of our rags to riches dreams, gathered up our life lessons, and joined Keller Williams Realty in September of 2010 with a wish and a prayer. When we became a part of the Keller Williams family, all we had was a computer, faith, and an undying need to succeed. By the end of that year, we closed 100 internet driven transactions… with no database.

 

In the six years that followed, growing organically through trial, error, and triumphs, I also launched a training and marketing company, Ballen Brands, to assist honest, hard-working professionals like you. I know how difficult the road to success is, and I know no one needs to walk it alone.

 

All of my lead generation - all-of-it - is done through search engine optimization (SEO) and social media. I learned the difficult way and I validate my experiences by recycling my hard knocks to demonstrate for you a simple way to dominate digital strategies. And the good news is, your success story won’t cost you millions over decades like mine did! It will only take you a short amount of time and a small investment to build your business, your reputation, and your riches. My marketing class was designed with you in mind.

 

You are invited to join me on the evolving journey. If you’ll allow me, I can show you mind-blowing tricks of the trade and secrets of success. I’m so sure of your potential growth in my classes, I’m willing to put my name on the line. All you have to do is register now. Need to think about it? Click here to learn more.

 

I’m so excited to meet you, to shake your hand, to answer your questions, and to help you grow your business.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

Lori Ballen

Digital Marketing Strategist

Ballen Brands - Helping Business Professionals Rise Above the Noise.
702.917.0755

 

 

P.S. You may just love my new B.R.E.W. websites!  B.R.E.W. stands for Ballen Real Estate Websites, and they’re gorgeous as well as functional. To learn more about B.R.E.W.s and other Ballen Brands services, you’re invited to visit us at BallenBrands.com, or call Jeff at (702) 917-0755. 

 

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