Image SEO: 8 Essential Strategies to Rank Images on Google

Are you struggling to push down old images in search results? 

Image SEO helps Google understand where to rank pictures.

Images can quickly become outdated, negative, or irrelevant to your brand.

If left untouched, they will continue to be the best option to show for your search term. 

In fact, Google Images account for 26.79% of all searches.

It's no secret that images play a big role in your search results. 

Fortunately, there are several options to help you push down old images and make sure customers find the best possible information about your business in Google Image Search. 

Learn how image SEO can refresh your image search results and protect your brand's reputation here.

Identify old images that are no longer relevant.

Start by assessing your images to identify any old images that should be replaced with new, more relevant ones. 

Consider using an image searches engine like TinEye or Google Reverse Image Search to locate the images you want to replace. 

Be sure to keep a document with a link to all the images you want to replace.

This can help you quickly find new and updated images for your website and refresh your Image Search results.

Generate fresh and relevant content to replace outdated images.

Utilizing creative techniques such as Adobe Photoshop or Canva can help you generate new, relevant content to replace outdated images. 

This approach helps you not only refresh your images but also enhance your online reputation with new search results. 

Creating quality and valuable content encourages viewers to stay longer on the website. This positively impacts SEO rankings.

Google Image SEO

Image SEO can help you make sure the photos on your site are discoverable by the major search engine. 

Here are 8 tips for optimizing images for Google Image SEO.

1. Provide good context

Images are one of the most important parts of a website or a blog post. Most people don’t read articles, they skim. 

Images make blog posts much more skimmable. However, don’t get carried away. Only use images where it will increase user experience. Such as references, stats, or comparisons.

Place images only in relevant areas where they can complement your text content. And don’t use an image of important text. Keep the text in written form. 

According to Google Developers, they particularly discourage pages where neither the images nor the text is original content.

2. Choose the right format.

Before you start worrying about why your images are not visible, check to make sure that you are using the right type of image. 

There are many formats of images, but PNG and JPEG tend to be the most popular for the web.

• PNG: This format produces better-quality images but has a larger file size.
• JPEG: Although you may lose image quality due to JPEG, you can adjust the quality level of your JPEG file to achieve a good balance.
• WebP: Select lossless or lossy compression with this -only image format that is supported by Chrome and Firefox.

We recommend using PGN images for the best results. 

3. Use Descriptive File Names and Alt Tags. 

Give your photos descriptive, keyword-rich file names and ALT tags so that they are easy to find. Google takes the ALT text into account when determining where an image should appear in its results. 

Including a few simple details about the subject matter of the photo can make it easier for both users and search engines to identify the content of the photo.

Good: white-kittens.jpg

Bad: image1.jpg

4. Compress Your Images for Faster Load Times. 

Image compression is an important part of optimizing your images for search engine visibility. Compressing your photos will ensure that they load quickly, resulting in a better user experience and higher chances of ranking well. 

Additionally, Google rewards sites with fast loading times, so compressing your photos can give you an extra SEO boost. 

There are a variety of tools available to help you compress images without sacrificing image size or quality.

• Tiny PNG - Tiny PNG allows you to compress both JPEG image formats and PNG image formats easily, allowing you to bulk upload up to 20 images at once.
• Optimizilla - Easy-to-use tool for optimizing images in JPEG, GIF, and PNG formats.
• JPEG.io - JPEG.io allows you to convert images from any format to JPEG. It supports more image types than other online image optimizers.

5. Focus on Quality Content, Not Quantity. 

When it comes to image SEO, it’s important to remember that quality trumps quantity. 

While having a large number of images can make your site appear more desirable to Google, you should focus on making sure that the quality of each image is as high as possible. 

Images with low resolution or poor color saturation won’t be ranked highly or seen by many viewers. 

Before you add an image to your site, make sure that it looks sharp and has vibrant colors.

6. Give Your Image Structured Data Markup. 

Adding structured data markup allows you to take a prominent spot in search results with an image. 

This usually takes the form of schema.org tags, which lets Google and other search engines read aspects of an image such as its creator and title. 

Google Images will display your images in rich results if you include structured data. This includes a prominent badge that gives users relevant information about your page. It can also drive more targeted traffic to your site. 

You should follow the general structure data guidelines and any specific guidelines for your structured type. Otherwise, your structured data may not be eligible for rich result display in Google Images.

7. Update sitemaps and submit them to search engines for re-crawling.

Keep your sitemap up to date by actively tracking changes you make to the website and then submitting it to the appropriate search engine. 

This is essential for re-crawling the page and ensuring that it’s properly indexed with all of its new content. 

Every time you make a change, be sure to update the sitemap and send it out for re-crawling so that Google can find it and show off your latest images in relevant searches!

8. Leverage Social Media Shares to Increase Image Rank.

Another way to boost your images on Google Image Search is to get more social media shares. Having your images shared on social networks will help them rank higher in search engine results. 

To increase the chances of success, focus on spreading your image across networks that are popular with visual content, such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. 

Encourage users to share the image by adding share buttons or by creating a hashtag for it.

What are the Benefits of Optimizing Your Images for Google Search Results?

Optimizing your images for Google search results can have many potential benefits. 

• Boost your website's visibility and rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs). 
• Increase the chances that they will be shown in image-based searches, resulting in more traffic to your website. 
• Improve the overall user experience on your website by ensuring that they are served quickly and efficiently. 
• Reduce bounce rates, leading to longer visits and improved conversions. 

Optimizing your images is also a great way to increase brand awareness. Users may be drawn to recognizable logos, images, and other visuals associated with your business. 

Optimizing images is essential to any SEO strategy, and the benefits can be tremendous. So it is important to ensure that proper optimization techniques are used when uploading images to your website.

Closing Thoughts

Outdated or irrelevant images can hurt your online reputation and impact your search ranking. You can use these SEO best practices to refresh your search results on Google Image Search.

Have negative images that are showing up in Google search results? 

Contact NewReputation today to remove your negative images from Google.