Creating SEO friendly images is simple to do, yet many website owners neglect this valuable source of search engine traffic. To make it even more simple, WordPress has some great tools built in to help you optimize your images.

The most important thing to know is that while people can see your images, search engines cannot “read” them. They can only read the words in the tags and titles you give your images. Therefore, these are the areas you want to attend to when adding images to your WordPress site.
Two points to keep in mind:

  • All images should have ALT and TITLE attributes defined. This is the image equivalent of the doc title or metadescription for the page.
  • Image filenames should have a relevant name, ideally with a keyword in it. For example, an image file of “logo.jpg” might make sense to you, the website owner, but it won’t mean anything at all to a search engine. “howtosetalttagsinwordpress.png” is a much more descriptive, and relevant, filename.

 

One final suggestion: Use the built in functionality in WordPress for attachment pages, rather than having images open in a lightbox or in their own page. Attachment pages combined with the Ultimate SEO Plugin create excellent SEO for images.

 

Next time you add an image to a WordPress page or post, remember to give the image file a relevant name and fill in the spaces provided for ALT and TITLE tags. Depending on how many images you have on your site, you may want to go back and fill in the ALT and TITLE tags.

Filed under: All about SEO

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