Image SEO: alt text, file names and formats

Images help readers and can bring visitors from image search, but heavy or unlabelled images hurt.

Alt text

Describe what the image shows in a short phrase. It helps screen-reader users and tells search engines what the image is. Decorative images can have empty alt text. The image alt tags checker lists every image missing one.

File names

ro-purifier-7-stage.webp says more than IMG_4821.jpg.

Formats and size

  • Use modern formats such as WebP or AVIF where supported. The image format checker shows which images could be lighter.
  • Resize images to the size they are displayed at.
  • Compress them.

Writing good alt text

  • Good: "Technician replacing the sediment filter of an RO purifier".
  • Too vague: "image", "photo1".
  • Stuffed: "ro purifier best ro purifier cheap ro purifier india".

Describe what matters in the context of the page. If the image is a chart, summarise what it shows.

Images and page speed

Images are often the heaviest part of a page. A single photo straight from a phone can be several megabytes. Resize it to the largest size it is shown at, compress it, and serve a modern format. The difference is often a page that loads in one second instead of five.

Captions and surrounding text

Text near an image helps search engines understand it. A short caption under product and how-to images helps readers too.

Image search traffic

For products, recipes, designs and how-to topics, image search can bring real visitors. Original photos do far better there than stock images used by hundreds of sites.

Loading

Lazy-load images below the fold and give images width and height so the page does not jump while loading. The lazy loading images checker checks this.

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