Using Images to Improve Your SEO in NJ

The most underrated aspect of search engine optimization, or SEO, is effectively using images to increase website traffic. Since it is often overlooked, image results from search engines aren’t nearly as competitive when it comes to page rankings. Image-based SEO in NJ is easy to implement but takes a few extra steps to ensure its effectiveness since search engines rely on specific measures to describe the image in search terms.
Search engines don’t see images in the same way we do. They rely on a variety of text-based cues to determine what an image is. So in order to paint a clearer picture for them, it’s important to include descriptive file names, image captions and accurate ALT tab
Descriptive File Names
This is the most important part of optimizing an image and the first thing search engines ‘see’ when they view an image. File names should be descriptive of what the image shows. For example, a picture of a beach should be titled, Beach-Photo.jpg, instead of the random numbers and letters images are often saved as. When titling an image, remember to place hyphens between words in the file name. This helps search engines assess the keywords included in the file name of the image.
Image Captions
Including image captions is a little more complicated, but it’s basically a short phrase that is used to provide context for the image and explains how it relates to the content on your website. Since search engines take cues from the text content of the blog post or article, it’s important to make sure the textual content of the page matches up with the description included.
Accurate ALT Tags
Finally, ALT tags, or alternate text, are text-based phrases originally created to help the visually impaired browse the Internet. While not intended for SEO uses, ALT text provides an easy way to optimize images by including short descriptive phrases search engines analyze and index. For example, the beach photo from earlier could have an ALT tag that reads, “A photograph of a beach at sunset.” It’s a small detail, but one that may help improve the ranking of targeted keywords. While it may be tempting to cram as many keywords as possible in to the ALT tag, it’s not advised and will ultimately not have any effect on your search ranking.
While optimized images may not be ideal for everyone, with proper use, they can boost performance of SEO in NJ. By applying the right names, keywords and text-based tags, you can add one more element to your optimized website.
If you are interested in SEO in NJ, visit www.semgeeks.com for answers to all your questions.