How to optimize Images and Increase Blog Traffic

This tutorial will explain you how to optimize images before uploading them on your blog. Generally, most of people don't optimize images before uploading it to Blogger as needed. Optimizing images should be done if you want to improve the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or your blog or site. Learning the correct and proper way of optimizing images in Blogger is also very important.

Google Image search is used widely for finding quality reference images, icons or photos. A great percentage of our blog traffic depends on Image search. But the problem is that, when we are downloading images they are saved with odd names and we don't take any interest in modifying the name. So, we should always consider two things when uploading images on our blog - the proper use of the alt tag and changing the name of the images or pictures choosing the right SEO keywords.

1. Change Image Name with Keyword

As mentioned above, most of the picture we are downloading on our hard drive are usually saved with names that make no sense like untitled.png, img0643.png etc. So changing these names with appropriate keywords is always helpful. For instance, if I want to add img or untitled in this post, then I would definitely change these name with those words - or keywords - that would describe the best my content; thus, if I want to add an image to a post about SEO topics, then I would name it something like SEO.png or seo-optimize-images.png so that it would be relevant to the post content.

2. Use the alt Attribute on an Image Tag

Search robots cannot read multimedia, be it graphic images or flash. An image is meaningless for search spiders if it is not defined (tagged). Therefore, in order to tell the search robots what the image is about, we can add an alt tag to our image code - when we upload a photo inside the post editor, click on the image and then click on the "Properties" link below it:

After clicking on the "Properties" link, the Image properties box will popup. Inside the Title text section, type a relevant title for your image, while in the Alt text section, type a short description of your image... then press OK.

It is recommended to write short sentences to describe your pictures and to keep the description limited to 4-5 words. Less is better. Also, make sure you don't use the same words and try to mix up your image keywords.

These are simple tips for SEO image optimization which are not only effective for your SEO but can also boost your traffic. If you are wondering how to get images for your blog, please read this tutorial: How to upload images and get the url of your pics.