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  • How to Boost Your Blog SEO with a Simple Image Hack

Blogging

27 Apr

How to Boost Your Blog SEO with a Simple Image Hack

  • In Blogging, Popular, Pro Tips, Writing
  • 12 comments
How to boost blog SEO with an image hack

How to boost blog SEO with an image hack

How’s your blog’s search engine optimization (SEO) looking?

There are several things you should do to the text in your blog posts to optimize them, including putting your keywords in your headline, but another, frequently overlooked way to boost your SEO is to optimize your images.

One of the quickest and most effective hacks is to simply rename your images using keywords and clear language.

Generally, when you upload an image to your computer, you end up with an image name like DC002347564. This means nothing to a Google robot indexing your site and it does nothing to further your SEO cause.

Instead, give that image a clear name that includes your keywords. For instance, when I uploaded the following image, it had the name “photo-1423483641154.JPG.”

How to boost blog SEO with images

For the post I included it in, I changed the name to How-to-Prevent-Food-Waste.JPG. The longtail keyword phrase we were trying to be found in Google for is, “How to prevent food waste,” so I made sure to include those keywords in the image name.

Notice how I broke up each word with a hyphen? That’s how Google recommends naming your image files for optimal search engine indexing. It’s clear, easy to read, and descriptive.

While we’re on the topic of blog images and SEO, you should also use the “alt” tag, image title, and, if appropriate, caption.

These things, which are found in the editing options in most content management systems (CMS) when you load an image into your blog, also boost your SEO by clearly telling search engines what your post is about.

For the alt and title, use the same format as you did with naming the image. If your image is of a surfer on West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz, and your post is about the best surf spots in California, you might use the following: best-surf-spots-in-Santa-Cruz-West-Cliff-Drive.

See how the keywords are in there, but also a description of where the surf spot is? Think of your images in terms of keywords and robots, and how search engines see your posts and you’ll be ahead of the pack.

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Tags:blog postblogging tipsboost SEOimage SEOoptimize images
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Cat Johnson
I help coworking space operators streamline and level-up their marketing. I'm a writer, content strategist and brand community builder based in Santa Cruz, California. Current projects include: Coworking Convos and the Coworking Content Lab workspace marketing club.

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    Comments

  1. Nishadha Silva
    May 25, 2016

    Is is really necessary to use the hyphens in alt tags and title tags? I understand the use of hyphen when naming the file because it makes sense. But alt tags etc are used by third party software ( ones that support blind reading etc ) so it might not make sense to hyphens in them.

    Reply
    • cat johnson
      June 29, 2016

      Hi Nishadha

      On researching your question, I found that, as the alt tag was originally designed to improve web accessibility, and is now widely used for SEO, you can either use hyphens or not.

      Some SEO experts advise using hyphens, while other suggest writing just as a reader would want to see the text—for example: Santa Cruz beach, instead of Santa-Cruz-beach.

      What are your thoughts?

      Cheers,
      Cat

      Reply
  2. Fred
    June 28, 2016

    Nice article Cat, I’ve been using this one for a while. Although it seems links still run the show, little stuff like this can only help!

    Reply
    • cat johnson
      June 29, 2016

      Hi Fred

      Yes! Quality backlinks are great. And, as you pointed out, with SEO, every little bit helps. It only makes sense to be as clear and descriptive with naming your images, to get the SEO boost, as opposed to having an image named IMG23463874712. 🙂

      Cheers,
      Cat

      Reply
  3. Rita luise
    July 12, 2016

    Loved the article.

    Reply
  4. Adam Ostopowich
    July 15, 2016

    Such an intelligent article, everyone will be helped from it. I was using images in the most lame way possible but now I will do it in a better way.

    Reply
  5. Carey Minnow
    October 6, 2016

    This is a good article. We have to apply even the most minute things to our SEO campaign as this might be the deciding factor in our campaign’s success.

    Carey

    Reply
  6. James
    December 26, 2016

    Even in the SEO starter guide written by Google itself has mentioned this tip. Including ALT tag in the image makes your website more search engine friendly and give more website traffic from Image search!

    Reply
  7. Big League Consulting
    January 5, 2017

    Another tip that can be added onto this is geotagging your images if you’re working with or have your own geo location to add extra relevancy.

    Reply
  8. Sharon Elleen
    February 23, 2017

    Very well explained. I really appreciate the insight here in this post and confident it’s going to be helpful to me and many others. Thanks for sharing all the information.

    Reply
  9. Sean
    April 18, 2017

    Every little bit helps. These tips are a great help.
    https://www.smartermax.co.uk/

    Reply
  10. SEO
    January 21, 2019

    I have been going through your blog and found this post really useful. I’ll definitely follow the mentioned tips. Thanks for sharing amazing blog post here.

    Reply

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