Image SEO : The important things you should know

Images are the most important component of the blog or the piece of content that you are writing.Without images, the post looks like a tree without leaves.

Images worth a thousand words.So bloggers always add images to their blog post to make it more enlighten and attractive.This is  a very good thing but the most people fails here - in Image SEO.

Image SEO is the most important thing we will discuss today as you can gain lot of traffic right from the 'image' section of any search engine.People are searching for images and now a days Google had removed direct download button, forcing users to go on their sites.So, from here only, we can get the traffic.

So lets have a look at the important things we need to know about Image SEO.

Add the Images from right source

Most of the Bloggers still searching on Google for images and directly add them in their blog posts.This is completely wrong and you may have to go through some legal disputes for that.As the images shown by Google are subjected to copyright, the owner has full right over his images.

So the question arrives-So from where we should gather the images?Shall we have to make or click our own?
And the answer is yes!You can of course click the images.but someone living on mars cannot click the image of Eiffel tower in Paris as he have to come there.

That's why we have the stock websites.

Stock websites are the websites which stores the images, vectors, illustrations and video footage which user uploads from the different part around globe.Then anyone can download it by paying some royalty fee.That's how the stock photography works.But everyone can't afford to buy these images from these sites.So we have the free image stock websites.

Free stock image websites like Pixabay, provides free images to users and can be downloaded without paying a single penny.There are many more stock image websites from which you can download the images such as-

1. StockSnap.io
2. Pexels
3. Unsplash
4. Shotstash
5. SuperFamous

It is very safe to use any of the image from the above site.You are free to mention more sites in comment box below of you know any.

The another way to grab images from Google or Bing search engine is that filter it.Filter the images based on their license.

In Google Images, click on 'tools' button.Some options will pan down. Click on 'Usage Rights'.Chose the option labeled with modification or labeled for reuse.

As shown in the above image, you can use the images labeled for reuse by directly copying from Google.

In Bing, Go in Images tab, click on 'Filter' button on extreme right.Again, as Google, some options will come down.Select License.Chose any one of the options marked red in below image.

But as experienced, not very good and on to point images are not found.But still you can use this as an method for getting images.

Compress the images

Images takes lot of time to download.Sometimes, more than 70% of page load time is used for getting images.This is all because the size of image is huge as compared to main html or CSS and JavaScript files.

So, you need to compress the images.Compressing images not only saves space, but also makes the page to load fast.

Some of the online image compressors are given below.

1. CompressorJPEG
2. CompressImage
3. Image Compressor

These are some tools which will help you to compress down your images.there are many such image compressors online.Some of them supports bulk images compression, while some not.

this is very irritating work of compressing images, then adding.There is no shortcut for it?Yes!There is! If you are using WordPress, then you can use plugin for it.There are many plugins which will compress images for you!

But if you are using Google Blogger, you don't have to worry even a single bit.It is because after uploading image, it directly compress it into small, medium, large and Extra Large.And still you can use original image if you want.

options available in Google Blogger for different image sizes.

There is no very much advantage using ful quality image on web.Consider, if you used 1080x540px image,it may load 200x100 or 500x250px on mobile phones.So we are just slowing down our website in unnecessary images.

Using ALT text

Alt tag is one of the most important text.Many bloggers make mistake here.They do not at all use these texts.
These text get used for two reasons. First is is anyone using their browser in 'text-only' mode, then he cannot see the images but he can know the place of the image.In that place  you might have notice some time, that a text is shown.This text is alt text.In second case, if the image on the server got deleted, it returns with 404 error.Then , in that image a text is is shown and that is alt tell that you input here.

In both the cases, the main purpose is to get the idea of what the image is to the user if he or she is unable to view the image.

What is Alt text?Alt means alternate text.It is a simple and short text for an image that describes the whole image.So, remember to use alt from now on wards, if you weren't.

Use the right keywords while naming the images

The right keywords always do well in Image SEO. So, you need to use the right keywords while naming the image.
You can name the image like below.For example-

small-tomato-plan.png

Rather than-

smalltomatoplant.png

If you want to find right keywords, go on NeilPatel's website and do a keyword research.

So that's were the tips about image SEO which can rank images from your bog so high that you can get more traffic through images rather than web search.

10 Tips to Speed Up Your Blog's Loading Speed

Maintaining higher blog speed is also a factor in SEO. We constantly need to check if our blog is running at uniform speed or not and for that we need to apply some techniques to make it faster.

Today we are going to look at some easy to do techniques to boost up page loading time.

• Take Look At Host

The very important thing if you have any blog, website or web app.It is okay if your bog is hosted on blogger.com as it runs on Google servers which are usually fast.

But if you are using any third party hosts, and your page loading speed isn't that great, then you need to upgrade your plans.If you are using shared hosting then upgrade it to VPS.

• minify CSS and JavaScript

If your scripts are not minified(compressed), then do it as it will surely increase your page load speed. Minifying or compressing this scripts will reduce the size of the files and thus, they will load faster.

If you use WordPress, you can use this or any other plugin.For non-WordPress users or bloggers, you can use some online tools like this.

• Compress images

This is the most important factor responsible for slow page loading speed. Many bloggers use high -quality images(nothing harm in them) and their size is also high so it takes much time in loading.

You need to compress this images as they will reduce image size and there is no much need of using high-quality 1080x1768 px images if finally, they will be loading at 590x590px. Also at mobile phone level, there is no much need of using this high-quality images.

When the page is being loaded, the browser tends to load the text in the page first.If you have already specified height and width of the image in <img> tag, the browser will leave that space and will load the text first and then it will load the images.

For compressing images, you can use WordPress plugins such as smush or many online tools are also available like this.

If you are using Google blogger, the Blogger will automatically resize the image and will add height width.

• Use CDN

Using content delivery network or CDN page will absolutely load faster as it would load resources from the nearest server to user. YouTube also uses CDN to deliver the video much faster to the user and cuts off much streaming time.There are many CDN available such as CloudFlare. It has 150+ data centers around world.

• Use a better theme

Use an SEO friendly, fast loading theme.If theme itself takes much time in loading, you need to change it immediately.

Choose a theme from well-trusted sources. It is better not to go much far for free themes in case of WordPress or similar as they can further create problems if there are any malicious code in it.In Blogger,theme  is made of simple xml yet you need to download from trusted sources.

• Don't load unnecessarily

Check whether some resources are loading unnecessary such as unnecessary scrips etc. If they are, better to remove them.

• Delete unnecessary plugins

If you find that a plugin is no longer useful to you, do delete it. Check for a plugin that would do the work of two or more different plugins(plugins substitute).

• Show limited number of posts

Anytime if a user searched anything to set a limit of 10 results or like that.Loading posts way more will increase loading time.So load a limited number of posts or even comments.

• Use JavaScript at end

When inserting JavaScript to the page, such as Facebook or any other sites, add it after <body> tag.SO it will not interrupt the existing things while loading.

• Don't use too many Advertisements

We've seen many bloggers using too many ads from different ad publishers.Load all the ads after loading the page.Many times, in slower connections before loading the text and images, the ads start bonking up.This is because they have inserted the scripts at top of the page.These scripts take time to load and further the whole page loads slowly.

Well, Google seems to consider 0.5-1 sec as excellent page loading time. However,less than 3 sec are average for most of the websites.

Use the above tips to make your blog faster and move a rank up in Google search!