How to Improve Google Image Search Ranking
How to Improve Google Image Search Ranking was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
If you can optimize it, you should. And images are no exception.
The images on your website represent another way to drive organic search traffic. Often overlooked, Google Image SEO can be just as important as optimizing your webpage text.
In fact, you might be surprised at just how much traffic your images are already sending to your site.
TL;DR: Google Images represents another path outside of regular web search for your audience to find your site and discover your content. Google is making significant changes to Google Images that put more emphasis on quality and relevance. To help you drive traffic from image search, we provide a list of ways to optimize images for a website.
How to SEO Images: Table of Contents
First, we’ll take a quick look at the latest news about Google Images:
Updates to Google Images Search
Google Hints at More Changes to Come
AI-Powered Results in Google Images
Then we’ll dive into how to SEO images in 16 steps:
Track Your Image-based Traffic
Create High-Quality, Original Content
Use Relevant Images
Have a Proper File Format
Optimize Your Images
Always Create Alt Text
Make Use of the Image Title
Create an Image Caption
Implement Structured Data if Possible
Consider Image Placement on the Page
Analyze the Content Around the Image
Create Page Metadata
Ensure Fast Load Time
Make Sure Images Are Accessible
Create an Image Sitemap
What’s New with Google Images
Google’s goal over the past year was to make image search more useful to users. We’ve likely all had the experience of finding an image connected to a not-so-great webpage.
Now, images attached to great content can do better in Google Images. So websites have more opportunity to rank images and drive traffic with well-optimized content.
Updates to Google Image Search
Major improvements to Google Images were announced in September 2018. The image-ranking algorithm now weighs these factors more heavily:
Authority: The authority of the webpage itself is now a more important signal for ranking an image.
Context: The ranking algorithm takes into account the context of the search. Google used the example of an image search for “DIY shelving.” Results should return images within sites related to DIY projects … so the searcher can find other helpful information beyond just a picture.
Freshness: Google prioritizes fresher content. So ranking images will likely come from a site (a site in general, but we believe the actual webpage in question) that’s been updated recently. This is probably a minor signal.
Position on page: Top-ranked images will likely be central to the webpage they’re part of. For example, a product page for a particular shoe should rank above a category page for shoes.
Google Images results pages also got a facelift:
Captions: Image results now show more context. For example, searchers can read captions including the website and title of the page where the picture is published.
Related searches: Google started providing related search terms at the top of the results page. Notice the buttons, which help users narrow their search.
NOTE: We cannot reproduce this in Google SERPs today, so this may have been a temporary feature.
Related search terms across the top let searchers narrow image results.
Google Hints at More Changes to Come
Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller indicated this week that images are a “bigger topic” now.
People are running transactional and informational types of searches more frequently through Google Image search. We don’t have details yet, but Mueller’s statements (see below) make it a good bet that more UI changes are coming.
There’s nothing specific to announce from my side — it’s just a general observation that images are (once again) gaining importance overall on the web, and a reminder to think of them as a way of enabling users to find your content through Google Images / image search.
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