Image SEO

Image SEO, defined

Image SEO covers everything that helps images load fast, be accessible and be understood by search engines: descriptive file names, useful alt text, sensible sizes and modern formats, placement near relevant text, and image sitemaps or structured data where useful. Google's image SEO best practices cover the main points.

An example from a UK business

A florist uploads phone photos at full size with names like "IMG_9341.jpg". She resizes them, saves them as WebP, renames them "autumn-wedding-bouquet-dahlias.webp" and writes alt text describing each bouquet. Pages load faster and some images start appearing in image searches.

What to avoid

• Uploading images straight from a camera.
• Using stock photos instead of your own work.
• Putting important text inside images where search engines and screen readers can't read it.
• Leaving alt text empty on meaningful images.

A quick check you can do now

PageSpeed Insights flags images that are too large or in older formats. A crawler lists images without alt text. Check file names in your media library. Search Google Images for your business name to see which photos appear and whether they show your work well.

What it changes for you

For visual businesses such as builders, salons, florists and landscapers, photos are often the most persuasive content you have. Good image SEO makes them load quickly on phones, helps visually impaired visitors and can bring visits from Google Images.

Images are also where many small sites lose the most speed. A single oversized photo can slow a whole page on mobile data, so getting images right helps rankings, conversions and visitors' data bills all at once.

Other on-page terms

• Alt text: A text alternative for an image, written for people who can't see it.
• Lazy loading: Deferring offscreen images: careful with LCP images.
• LCP: Largest Contentful Paint: how quickly the main content of a page loads.