After sharing a blog post about how to increase blog traffic, I found how that post is useful for many of my fellow buddies. Therefore I thought of sharing few posts on some of my ideas and experience of this journey as a food blogger. Hope this series would be helpful for you.
When we write a blog post, we need to optimize the post to well rank in Google or any search engine. Images play a more important role, specially in food blogs. Most search engine traffic attracts to the image of the recipe and visit the blog for the recipe. Personally I search for images when I search for a recipe. If the image catches my eye, then I visit the site to read the post.
As food bloggers, we know how we spend lot of time for capturing a good photograph, then edit it and upload it into a blog post. But if we don’t optimize it for better search engine result, and if our images don’t appear in search engines, then there is no much effect from those uploaded photos to the blog post .(considering search engine traffic)
So, here are few tips to follow when you upload an image to your blog post. I follow these tips and I have seen a good percentage of my search traffic drive through the image search.
1) Use key words in image name.
Usually original photos are named like image-3362.JPG or DSC07574.JPG.But if you upload the photo with same name, search engine crawlers don’t understand what it is about. Therefore give a name for the image which matches with the post title.
Say, you have captured a photograph by using all food photography tips and spending lot of time on it, but uploaded it as image-3362.jpg etc. But another food blogger who doesn’t spend much time for a photograph upload a photo of a similar recipe, but name it as Mango-Drink-Recipe.(example) When a person search for a mango drink, the 2nd photo has a lot of chances to appear than the first.
If you try to right click the images which I have shared in different posts (or in the same post) , you’ll see how I have named different images with different names.
2) Use hyphen in between key words
When you use key words to name your images, don’t leave a space or don’t use underscore in between the words. Use the hyphen instead.
Ex: Mango-Drink-Recipe
3) Compress the images
Before uploading an image to the blog post, compress it to a smaller size without loosing the quality of it. I usually use PhotoScape or PicMonkey for post editing. Other than that you can get help of different photo editing software such as Photoshop. A compressed image loads faster and therefore you gain a good site performance too. On the other way this will help to improve the bouncing rate of the site.
4) Use Title tags and Alt Tags for the images.
Title tags and Alt tags are more important for better SEO. In blogger, once you uploaded an image for a blog post, left click it. Then you’ll see some details appear. Click ‘Properties’. A small box will appear with the name ‘image properties’. Fill this box with a title tag and a Alt tag. I usually use the title of the blog post as Title tag. For the Alt tag, I use some alternative name which a person can search the same recipe.
If you hover on the images I have uploaded in my recent posts, you’ll see the title tags appear on images.
5) Don’t stuff
The above are the top SEO tips for image optimization. However when you use tip no 1 and 4, don’t stuff too many key words. The text of image should be short and descriptive. Use 4-5 best key words that describe the image.
Hope these tips are helpful for you when writing a blog post. I would like to know about your tips on image optimization. Please share them in comments.
38 comments
Very informative and useful pos. Thanks for sharing it.
Very informative and useful post. Thanks for sharing it.
Glad it is helpful…
Wonderful post for newbies like us !
thanks,glad to see this is helpful….
Hi Amila, great posting. Thanks for sharing the useful tips.
Have a nice day.
Happy to see it is helpful,Have a Nice day to you too…
Very useful especially naming the image because I have not been doing it. Thanks so much.
I am really happy to know that I have shared something helpful,hope you’ll optimize the images in future for better results…
Great work Amy! Thanks for sharing this info!
Thank you so much for stopping by and following I’m your newest follower 🙂
Hey Amila,
Gr8 tips !! Especially for a new blogger like me it’s really useful…Thanx for sharing :))
Thanks for sharing great post,good to know 🙂
very informative dear, thanks for sharing…
So informative and useful tip, great info.
today’s post:
http://sanolisrecipies.blogspot.in/2013/08/litti-mixed-chokha-with-hara-dhaniya.html
awesome post !! very very informative dear 🙂
Some very useful tips. Thanks!
Very interesting info..
Great tips, thanks for sharing with us at the weekend blog hop 🙂
What a helpful post, thanks! I’d seen mention elsewhere of tagging photos, but didn’t know how to do it. I’m going to give it a try now!
Popping over from Clairejustine’s weekend bloghop.
Thank you, Amila! I’m going to pin this. I found you via the blog hop and am a new follower via bloglovin.
I would love if you followed back.
Very useful post. I never do these. Wud keep in mind from now on ! Thanks 🙂
these tips are so so important to every food blogger,thanks for the info 🙂
Amila you have been very very generous to share such a wealth of info with all bloggers,thanks 🙂
This is wonderful information, some of which I didn’t know! Thank you for sharing at Mix it Monday 🙂
Hi Amila. I’m so glad you stopped by My Sweet Mission and linked up a couple of your amazing posts to my new party! I love your photo tips & do use them for better SEO. Thanks for sharing!
Have a sweet day!
Heather
MySweetMission.net
Amila, just stopping by to tell you that you were one of my top 5 featured posts from my Sweet Wednesday Link Party last week! Congratulations and stop by to get your Featured button, you deserve it!
Hugs,
Heather
MySweetMission.net
wow!Thanks a lot…really happy to hear that
Saw this post at Sweet Mission (I’m featured with you!) And had to read. Great, informative post. I always change my image names but not in the best way – no hyphens and just one or two key words. I’ll mend my ways! Cheers, Amila x
Thanks for the comment and glad to know this post is helpful!
Cheers!
It’s very informative Amelia thanks for sharing…
Many bloggers take time to learn how to get more visitors to their site. Most of the time, people who are blogging casually are just as interested in traffic as those who also benefit financially. You are right about using the keywords in the image name but sometimes people forget to do this.
Well, these are really very much effective and useful tips to be followed for betterment of SEO and these are very basic to be followed as well. There are several SEO experts following all the rules carefully and performing the task manually on their own. Some of those can be found at http://www.damiestechnologies.com/search-engine-optimization.html
i was confused about off page seo…but your article has cleared my confusion..thank u
seo
Actually I was looking to get in such post and finally found here. I want to optimize some of my images for a website and that’s why here provided allocation will be sound handy for me. Thanks 🙂
Just what I was looking for. Thanks for sharing. I will make use of tags from now on.
nice article
Its a good article . Its very helpful……….
http://kepran.com/web-portal-development/
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