How To Optimize Images For SEO On Blogger

Blogger the very platform that powers this blog, and developed by Google has sort of an image problem. Let's explain images are uploaded fine and Google's servers are great at delivering them quickly but it does a couple of things poorly that truly hinder them from ranking well and ranking your images well in Google, can make the difference when it comes to gaining website traffic.

Before, we jump into how to optimize these images we first, need to address what goes into image optimization for SEO. First and foremost is the actual filename you want to optimize the naming of your files so that way the keyword that you're attempting to rank for is in the image.

Name Your Image Files With Your Keyword

So if you have a screenshot, of a particular program like Google Chrome you don't want to name your image file screenshot-123.jpg you would want to name it google-chrome-flags-window.jpg. See how the image text matches the keywords Google Chrome and it explains what the image is showing the "Flags Window" which allows you to turn off and on various experimental settings in Google Chrome.

So, the first step before anything is making sure your image has a good name that includes your keyword. No more generic image names like download(1) they all need proper and unique names.

Compress The Image For Improved Performance

Yes, Blogger does not by default compress images in any meaningful way, which means you're going to need to do this yourself or suffer from having an incredibly slow website. I recommend using one of the many free online tools including the ones below.

• TinyPNG / TinyJPG
• Imagify

Now your images have been compressed so they won't slow the site down and they have good naming that includes your keyword this takes us to the next part. 

Alt Text & Title Text Optimization

Alt Text & Title Text were both built to aid screen reader users so that their software could provide text to describe the image too them. Without this text, the image would essentially be non-existent to screen readers. 

So when writing title and alt text for your images, you need to include the keyword for the article you're trying to rank for. Now, on Blogger the only way to add this text is by going onto the article changing the compose to HTML and by manually finding the images. 

After you find your image you're going to want to add this code to the image the text will look something like this. 

<img src="https://(some image url .jpg)" width="image width=" height="image height" alt="Your Keyword Descriptive Text Here" title="Same Keyword Text Here" />

Afterwards, congratulations you have managed to add proper alt text to your image and in doing so you have keyword optimized the image. 

Closing Thoughts

When making use of images there are also some important design choices when deciding to include them on your website that while not directly related to SEO can lead to a better user experience. Most user's hate having images interrupt their flow of reading so make sure to align them to the left or right of the content that way it does not disturb them and shift their focus away from their content. 

Additionally, make sure to not serve overly large images to users as it can slow down the loading of your website and negatively affect user experience. 

Finally, make sure to use images in every way that you can don't leave a post barren of images if you can help it because while our 500-word recommendation is great for Content SEO as we all know an image is worth a 1,000 words.