SEO, or search engine optimization, is an important part of creating a successful ecommerce website. SEO can help you rank higher in search engine results pages. When you rank higher, the chances of people clicking on your link to get to your site increase, too.
But SEO is not just about keywords and links – it’s also about load speed and user experience. So, you shouldn’t just insert relevant keywords into your product descriptions. You should also optimize the photos for ecommerce SEO. The easiest way to start image optimization is by changing the name and adding the caption to the photo.
But there are many more intricacies that go into image SEO. In today’s article, you will learn about image SEO that can give your brand a competitive edge. You won’t just help boost your SEO rankings and decrease bounce rates by making your website faster and easily accessible. Ultimately, you can increase the level of customer satisfaction, too.
1. Use responsive images
A responsive image automatically adjusts to fit the size of the screen. So, no matter what kind of device you use or if you minimize the browser window, the size of the photo will quickly adapt.
Define your images’ “width” and “height” attributes (see screenshot below). This will allow the browsers to size the image before the Cascading Style Sheet or CSS, which is used to style a web page, is loaded. This also stops the page from jumping when it loads. It tells the browser how much space to allocate for your image and prevents any interference with Core Web Vitals optimization.
If you make your photo responsive, you also prevent it from moving in relation to other website elements. This is called a layout shift. A layout shift occurs when page elements change their size and position, thereby affecting the positioning of other elements on the page.
When thinking about your ecommerce store, you also have to make sure its images are of the perfect size. If the image is too big, website storage space is unnecessarily consumed. So, your site takes longer to load. One of the most common SEO mistakes is neglecting website speed. People don’t want a slow website. So, Google down-ranks the website.
Besides, when you upload perfectly sized images for your website theme, you don’t just get a website that loads seamlessly. The content management system will display the images correctly, too.
But what are perfectly sized images? A standard blog image, or a product photo, should have 630px in height and 1200px in width. Also, consider the area above the visible part before scrolling the fold when choosing the image size. For more important images, you can use a larger size. However, if the text is more important, the size of the image can be reduced.Using responsive images is important for improving user experience and, as a result, SEO. You’ll increase your chances of generating traffic, and therefore, customers. Complement this with customer retention strategies and your ecommerce business will grow.
8 Ways to Improve Your Ecommerce SEO
Learn how to improve search engine optimization for an ecommerce store. Read up on SEO tips including SEO audits, keyword research, product descriptions and more.
The Smile.io BlogGabrielle Policella
2. Optimize alt text and image titles
Alt text is a type of caption that isn’t visible to the naked eye. The alt text is shown when the image can’t be displayed on the page or if someone uses a screen reader, a browser used by people with a visual impairment. Without the alt text, users won’t know what the image is about if the page doesn’t load properly. A screen reader won’t know what the image is about either. That’s why it’s critical to image SEO.
In the image to your right, you can see, highlighted in yellow, the alt text in HTML that describes the bag of Doritos. So, if the bag of Doritos to your left doesn’t load, we’ll see in its place the text “Doritos Tortilla Chips, Nacho Cheese, 1.75-Ounce Large Single Serve Bags (Pack of 64).” That’s great for user experience.
There’s another reason you should use alt text in your images. Search engines also use this information to understand what an image shows and its purpose. Alt text essentially helps search engines categorize images the right way and decide how relevant they are.
If you want to add alt text to your image, include relevant phrases from your SEO tool. For example, you can use phrases describing your product. The important part is to describe what’s in the image so it’s helpful both for search engines and people.
Collecting these phrases is called keyword research and should always be a part of your content roadmap. But remember not to stuff the description of every photo with keywords.
Other important data you can provide about the photos you use for image SEO is the image title. It’s not the same as the filename – you can specify the image title in the content management system you use or in the HTML code of the photo. The image title further helps Google identify the picture’s meaning and classify it accordingly.
For example, if you have a product photo of a red dress, you can give the photo the image title “red cocktail dress.” It will allow Google to display it in search results for similar terms. The more relevant information around the image you can provide, the more it will seem important to Google.
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and Why is it Important for Your Ecommerce Store?
Search engine optimization is the key to any ecommerce business’ success. Learn what it is, why it matters, and how you can put it into action today.
The Smile.io BlogGabrielle Policella
3. Compress your images
Image compression is also important in image SEO. In simple words, compressing an image means downsizing it. Every image is composed of pixels, and a fixed number of bits represents each pixel. This is why high-resolution pictures are huge and hard to work with.
So, we need a way to properly represent the file and store the information about the image in a minimum number of bits. We have to do this without losing the character of the image. You can do this if the colors in your image that are similar are combined so the resulting number of colors is lower. If you reduce the number of colors, a 24-bit PNG file can be converted to a much smaller 8-bit indexed color image.
It might seem complicated, but in practice, it is quite easy. Many content management system’s (CMS) platforms have plugins that compress the images. However, you can also use a web compressor such as https://tinypng.com/. It allows you to upload a file and makes it smaller in size with no visible loss of quality.
When you compress your images, the browser can load them quicker. This doesn’t just ensure a better user experience. It also allows fast information transfer to search engines.
4. Choose the right image format
The format of your image file might not seem important. However, you have to know that each type has different characteristics. For example, PNG allows for better image quality but results in a larger file size. These nuances can cause unnecessary use of website storage space and slower loading of images.
If high loading speeds are the most important to you, the best format to choose is WebP. You can also use JPG and PNG for your website. Just don’t use images in .jpg format inside an inline SVG (using an