How to Optimize Your Graphics Content for Best Traffic Generation

Most website developers use graphical content on their websites for aesthetic appeal and to use them as visual platforms to explain things better to the audience. While most marketers are very conscious about how written content can affect their SEO, they are fairly clueless about the impact images have on their search engine page rankings. Here are some smart tips and tricks on getting the most out of your images:

Include Alt Text Appropriately

Because Google or other search engines cannot understand pictorial content, they need to be helped to do so by the alt text that is basically a written description of the image in an HTML format. Written in plain language, it helps Google to understand what the image is. It is important that you only use alt text for pictures that are important to the content; so you need not bother about inserting alt text description for images that serve purely decorative purposes. While it can be pretty tempting to insert keywords in the alt text, do it very conservatively as Google is extremely sensitive to keyword stuffing and could actually end up penalizing you for over-optimizing the images.

Caption Your Images

Instead of letting pictures do all the talking you can think about giving them a boost by including strong well–written captions to engage your audience better. According to Kissmetrics, images captions are read three times more than the accompanying body text. The typical reading habits being what they are, most readers even if they are skimming through the page contents will stop at the images and read the captions. An SEO consultant at a reputed New York SEO Company advises that it is not necessary for marketers to caption every image on the page – do it only when the situation demands an explanation and keep it as precise and relevant as possible because that helps Google to appreciate how the image adds value to the readers. As of now, Google does not use image captions to impact the page rankings.

Use Graphics to Build the Internal Linking Structure

Original graphics that tell a powerful story can take quite some time to design, and you should not let that time and effort go to waste by publishing it just once. If the graphic is relevant in other contexts, you should be able to pull it up for using it in the new content and it will save you a lot of trouble of having to create yet another graphic to tell the story you want. You can give you own website a valuable boost by using the picture on your blog and linking it back to your site.

Use Schema to Give Images a Function

The manner in which you content functions is determined by the schema markup language used and is as relevant to text as it is for images. Even though its usefulness is very well established, it is a complete surprise to discover that only a tiny fraction of all websites take advantage of it for their content. Using schema, it is possible to assign your pictures specific roles. For example, when a search is being conducted on Google for “macaroons”, the search engine can be instructed to place the photo next to a result containing a recipe on the page displaying the search results using schema.

Use Graphics with Embedded Code to Get Backlinks

Using custom images is a very effective way of engaging your audience. You can make it easy for your readers to share your images as this will not only make your images more popular but also have the result of boosting your search rankings as you can earn valuable backlinks to your site. This is done by offering your audience the embed code to make it easy for them to share the image. This embed code also points back to your site so whenever someone shares your image using the embed code he is giving your SEO a boost as backlinks are a tried and tested SEO technique.

Conclusion

Using images in website content is especially useful in grabbing eyeballs in a typical situation where attention spans are very small. Images help to engage the target audience and keep them invested. The use of images has important SEO implications that should not be ignored by marketers wishing to drive their web content higher up in the rankings.