Without the right SEO strategy, especially when it comes to your images, your ecommerce site will fail to get the highest ranking possible in image search results. After all, images are the main component of search results. Many are found on the first page which garner the most attention.
With the strategies below, you can optimize every image in your store so that more people will find your products.
Recommended Reading: SEO for Images: How to Optimize Images for Search
The first step in image optimization for your ecommerce site is to acquire high-quality images, but the next step is to properly name every image so that search engines will be able to find them easily. If you name an image by the product’s SKU number, for example, you can’t expect that it will show up in search engine results. Instead, all image names need to be descriptive, simple, and keyword-rich.
Think about the keywords that your customers would use to search for an item, and then add those to the image’s file name. For example, if you sell natural makeup products, you might name an image “all-natural-red-lipstick.jpg,” rather than using a series of letters and numbers that search engines won’t recognize.
Image SEO also involves the creation of alt tags. These are designed to serve as text alternatives to your images when browsers are unable to render them properly.
So, for example, an alt tag would look like this: <img src=“all-natural-red-lipstick.jpg” alt=“all natural red lipstick”>
Create an image sitemap to optimize images because it provides search engines with additional information about the images found in your shop.
Your website should already have a sitemap to which you can simply add the appropriate image information. Otherwise, you can create a sitemap dedicated to your images. For every URL that you list in the sitemap, simply add more details about the images that are found on that page. Make sure that you follow these guidelines when creating an image sitemap.
To keep load times as fast as possible, all of the image files on your website should be as small as possible, but you shouldn’t sacrifice quality.
Save every image in a format that’s web-optimized. It’s also best to stick with square images.
In addition to optimizing the written content on your site, you need to go a step further and optimize your images if you want your ecommerce site to succeed and stay ahead of the competition.
Failing to do so could result in missed opportunities to generate more traffic and attract more customers, so image SEO is definitely worth your time and effort.