An overlooked source of traffic.
WHY IT MATTERS
Image search brings visitors, particularly for products, recipes, how-to content and anything visual.
For a shop, image results frequently outperform text results for product queries.
WHAT TO DO
Descriptive filenames before uploading. blue-cotton-shirt.jpg, not IMG_4471.jpg. Alt text describing the image accurately. This serves accessibility first and search second. Relevant surrounding content, since engines use context to understand images. Appropriate file sizes, since slow images harm the whole page. Modern formats where supported.
WHAT NOT TO DO
Stuff keywords into alt text. Describe the image. Use alt text on purely decorative images, which should have empty alt attributes. Upload enormous files and resize with CSS.
STRUCTURED DATA
Product and recipe markup can make your images eligible for enhanced image results.
SITEMAPS
Image sitemaps help discovery on sites where images matter commercially.
THE PRACTICAL PRIORITY
Filenames and alt text on product images. It takes seconds per image at upload time and considerably longer retrofitted.
