By oficly 
A lot of site owners say that more images make better SEO and thereby help in higher ranking of pages. But in fact, the increase in the number of images does not necessarily lead to the improvement of the rankings. Actually, irrelevant images only slow the site down-let people down, and simultaneously reduce on-site engagement.
The question to be asked is not how many images you add, but how you do it, making them valuable with respect to your content, user engagement, and traffic direction.
In this article, let’s explore how images affect SEO and which strategies work, the ones that don’t, and how best to add value to your images.
How Google views images
Google uses several signals such as context, alt text, and structured data to know what the image is trying to say. So, flooding your website with pictures will not make it any higher.
Images truly support SEO but do not replace good content. A webpage with fewer, relevant and optimized images often performs well rather than a webpage with many random images.
Images as a Supporting Ranking Signal
Images are one of the supporting elements of SEO that reinforce content by representing topics. Baking bread as the context producer and supporter will be greatly boosted by images of the six steps of getting there or those showing the final product.
But uploading images alone without relevant content improvements will not elevate your rank in Google. The context of the images is what matters with Google assessing the value they can provide to the user and not merely counting how many images there are on the page.
How Images Improve User Engagement
Images may not be the direct attribution enhancer for ranking in search engines, yet they keep people engaged along with improving the user experience so that they won’t leave your site. There’s a value to show how good images make the content easy to understand and increase user engagement.
Reducing Bounce Rate: Research proves that pages with easy movement and pleasant images will always have visitors staying steady and, accordingly, show a message of approval to Google about the site content.
Increase Time on Page: Images that facilitate a clearer understanding (or examples, for that matter) always prompt the reader to stick around longer. For instance, step-by-step visuals could give a good tutorial and keep the user reading, rewarded at the very end for watching the video.
Improve Scroll Depth: Long paragraphs make their own, hardcore fun. Images relevant to the text delight the eye and punctuate the text, urging the reader to scroll further.
Image Search Traffic vs Organic Rankings
Images can drive traffic in ways that regular search rankings do not. It is, for instance, reasonable to acknowledge that your site’s images that are well-optimized can bring traffic to your pages, even if these pages are put lower on a standard Google SERP listing.
For instance, a store for custom mugs on an e-commerce platform may likely come up among image search results if each product of the site displays a well-labeled image, descriptive image alt text, and a meta tag. This in turn means more hits for the product pages.
What gets hurt by heavy promotion in an image search is tutorials, guides, and infographics. That is because users often seek a visual explanation or examples; therefore, optimized images will greatly benefit any of these.
Placement is easier than Quality
In SEO, image placement usually takes priority over numbers. After all, suitable placement will give the image a value and a better approach toward content explanation.
Support Images : Many images are put there along with text. (charts or schemes, preliminary interface sketches) They increase user understanding and provide enhanced reading if the picture selection is best taught within set context.
Above the fold images : These are images that serve as focal details and are displayed prominently upon reaching the page. They invite the reader and hence, persuade them to further engage with and read the message.
Step by Step or Explanatory Images: These could be any images you intersperse with instructions, examples, or more detailed explanations so that people can better understand the content. The more you can illustrate the more you can engage your readers in both understanding and communicating with you.
Alt Text: The Most Important Image Element
Alt texts are descriptions that let search engines and users know what an image represents. Because each individual picture or graphical image must significantly influence a Web page’s visibility through SEO, building landmark tags images is necessary for every website!
Tips for Writing Good Alt Text:
Describe the picture in detail! Let the person understand the picture, excluding picture captions like “picture 1 or …”
For example, this would instead refer to an instructive, step-by-step infographic on SEO optimization of your images.
Use Keywords Naturally: If your material discusses “images for SEO,” just try and include that phrase within the alt-text naturally, where applicable.
Do Not Endorse the Practice that is Called “Keyword Stuffing”: Do not load multiple keywords or use generic terms. Keep it simple, specific, and useful.
Image File Optimization and Page Speed
Images’ role in defining page speed is generally enormous; this normally is the basis of the SEO ranking factor.Certain problems like having improperly optimized and too large images might result in slowing down your website, which pushes up the speed of your bounce rates and hence lowers interaction.
Best Practices for Image Optimization:
- Compress Image: Compress images in such a way that their quality is maintained. Despite their compressed format, they still need to be quality images. This way, pages that contain lots of elements can be loaded quickly.
- Use Advanced Image Formats: Formats like WebP or AVIF are much smaller than traditional formats such as JPEG or PNGs for style-sheet loading relief.
- Use Lazy Load: Images should be loaded only when they appear on the screen; in other words, the page must be visible on the user’s browser; this way, the page can load faster plus the performance can be increased.
- Resize Images for Various Devices: Ensure that the images appear proper on both mobile phones and desktops. Serving the correct image size prevents unnecessary load for the user and therefore improves the user experience.
Pros and Cons of Adding Too Many Images
The addition of images can drastically improve SEO by gaining user interest and enhancing the understanding of content. On the other hand, adding too much imagery for no clear purpose will mess up page loading times as well as user experience.
Pros of Adding Images for SEO
- Explain Complex Topics: Charts, diagrams, tutorials, and infographics provide an easier medium to understand topics.
- Show Product Features: Showing in-depth images of products tends to attract clicks, especially on e-commerce sites.
- Offer Visual Comparisons: The visuals in the before-and-after images or data visuals offer clarity that would otherwise be read only in text.
- Enhance User Engagement: Pictures that are relevant continue to hold the users’ interest and increase the time on page, as well as the scroll depth, indirectly supporting SEO.
Disadvantages of Too Many Images
- Page Loading is Slow: Pages may load slowly owing to the large or excessive images, thus making users furious.
- Visual Chaos: Hard to find the content and follow it with numerous images.
- High Bounce Rates: Too many images can hinder user interaction and increase bounce rates.
- Mobile Performance Issues: Mobile with large images have problems crawling, which would further degrade the user experience.
Stock Images v/s Custom Images
Use images to engage users and build brand. A unique image won’t automatically rank the page at the top on Google. But relevance and quality of content matter more than what makes it build the uniqueness.
Stock Images:
Elucidate content. Stock images are meant to depict content at a glance, rather than only to fill up valuable space on the page.
Relating to the Topic: Images need to portray the content so that the information is solved and contextualized for the user.
Performance orientated: Optimized images of the proper type and size will prevent the page from slowing down and ensure a good user interface.
Custom Images:
Improve User Engagement and Build Brand Identity: Unique visuals will attract user attention, boost interaction, and make your brand identity stronger.
Shows the Products or Services: Consequently, product pictures can be seen in enlarged display cases, making the site guests ever so aware of what they are actually offering and, hence, build up the confidence to make a decision.
Communicating through Visuals: Custom animation, hand drawn illustrations, tables, or screenshots that take them through the step-by-step process will be most effective.
Image SEO Best Practices
Optimization of images not only improves SEO but also brings in better traffic and augments the user experience. Just putting up images is not enough, for they need to be structured and optimized so that both search engines and users can benefit.
1. File Names
Use a descriptive filename related to the image instead of a general term such as “image1.jpg.” A properly named file describes to search engines what the image is about. For instance, instead of photo123.jpg, opt for images for seo guide. Include relevant keywords naturally, but it must be easily readable and refer to content.
2. Alt Text
The alt text is of utmost importance in SEO for images. It gives a textual (!) description of the image for search engines and for visually impaired users. Some crucial points with regard to alt text are:
- Describe the images accurately.
- If possible, work in the main keyword, e.g. “images for SEO” or the relevant one.
- Avoid keyword stuffing or irrelevant phrases like “image1.”
Alt text is not just an effort to make accessibility effective, but it also aids in landing your images in Google Search.
3. Responsive Images
Different devices require different image sizes. The main issue arises when we unload oversized desktop images on mobile screens, consequently slowing down page load. HTML srcset and sizes attributes enable their proper download and scaling down to the required size of desktop, tablet, or mobile versions hence benefiting not only the user experience but also overall page load.
4. Modern Image Formats
Use modern and lightweight formats such as WebP or AVIF in place of outdated JPEG or PNG. These formats genuinely reduce file size without sacrificing quality and thus up system speed. System speed is an important SEO factor for Core Web Vitals.
5. Structured Data for Images
Structured Data can be of help for search engines to interpret the content of your images better, thereby promoting rich image results. For example:
- Recipes: Include images in recipe schema for rich snippets.
- Products: Product schema with images can enhance e-commerce listings.
- Tutorials or How To Guides: Step images in how to schema help Google display rich results.
Conclusion
Images are instrumental in making content more engaging, legible, and enjoyable, ultimately boosting the overall SEO performance. Thus, use descriptive file names, alt text, responsive images, and relevant images so that the pictures will fancy appealing to both readers and search engines.
With these requirements in place, the images that you use will offer better avenues for increased engagement potential and could provide better value to your audience unless you succeed also to focus on the quality, relevance, and drawn optimization.