Image SEO: Key Tips and Actionable Guides from Google

Google employee John Mueller elaborated on how to drive traffic to your site using images, how to leverage them for promotional goals, and which tools to apply. Images are displayed in Google Images, Google Discover, and formed as search results.
Initially, John recommends defining promotion goals, after which it is necessary to answer several questions:

• Do users use image search to find your site content?
• If yes, what search algorithm do they follow?
• Which images from the information sample will be useful to users?
• Are there relevant images on the site pages?

Only after answering these questions can you select images aligned with the site’s goals.

Recommended Tips for Getting Traffic from Images

1. Context Analysis. The page content and selected image should harmonize and complement each other. Images or infographics serve only as vivid visual representations of the text.
2. Proper Placement. Place the image near the relevant text, and having an appropriate caption is an additional advantage for defining the context.
3. Boundaries of Text and Image. Important text elements should not be placed over the image. This especially applies to menu items, headings, or lists with certain facts.
4. Applying the alt-attribute. Those who do not see image information still receive it.
5. Only Quality and Engaging Images.
6. Multifunctional and Interesting Sites. Quality content on the image page is used to generate descriptions in search results.
7. Site Adaptation. The resource should be adapted to all types of modern devices.
8. Thoughtful URL Structure for Images. A logical address structure is a mandatory promotion condition. Constant addresses are also crucial for images since search engine bots rarely refer to images. If possible, use a 301 redirect when it’s not possible to keep the image address unchanged. If you need to prohibit image scanning, use

Modern Image Optimization Techniques:

1. Structured Data Markup. Recipe markup should be used for recipe pages, News Article for news sites. If selling products online, the size switches to Product. Additional info on this can be found in the developer documentation.
2. Large Preview. Do not prohibit users from activating large preview, as a high-quality image can attract traffic from Google Discover. In this case, the directive max-image-preview: large is applied.
3. License Data. This information helps users understand under what conditions copying and use of the image occur.
4. Loading Speed. The search engine provides the following recommendations:

• image optimization;
• apply lazy loading;
• activate access to responsive images.

With these parameters significantly optimize the image.

Ultimately, page load speed increases, positively affecting the search output. Further acceleration is also possible with AMP technology.
Any additional information regarding these recommendations can be found in Google’s official developer guide.