When it comes to the images on your site, it is essential these are labeled with SEO in mind. This is a job that is often missed and considering the benefits, it should be commonplace in your business. If you sell a product that is likely to be searched via image, you are only missing out on this potential revenue stream – as well as failing to create the optimum user experience.
With so many online businesses, and so much choice available to the customer, shoppers have become savvier on how to find what they want online. Often an image can be the first reason a consumer becomes interested in a product and so it would make sense to capitalise on this.
From a recent survey we can see that 94% of consumers intend to maintain or increase their online shopping over the fast-approaching holiday season, and so images will form a key part of that customer journey. The results for people upping their online shopping habits are compelling and with events such as Black Friday becoming a regular fixture, image search will provide consumers a visual of what they are looking for.
Optimizing all the content for SEO is essential for your rankings and this includes image filenames. Implement user-friendly image filenames as they are more likely to be recommended by Google. Search engines not only crawl the text on your webpage, but they also crawl these image file names. Therefore, it is important to use relevant keywords to help your website pages rank on search engines. You will need to create descriptive, keyword-enriched file names as this is integral when it comes to optimising images.
How do we do this? In short, you have to match the image name to what the image is using a naming convention that considers SEO. This means that file names should be lowercase, and all the words should be separated with hyphens. Of course, there is a full guide that is from Google itself on how to add images to search results, and before embarking on his task it is always best to consult with the experts!
Although these results will not be instant as Google will have to crawl these images for them to show in search results, the gains that can be made are significant. Solid image content can provide great traffic to your site which will contribute to helping with your organic metrics.
Remember to consider this as part of your overall SEO strategy and something you should address going forward. Consulting with an expert can ensure this is done correctly, however, Google provides the requirements in their entirety here.
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