When you think about optimizing your website for Google, there are usually a few topics that tend to come up when it comes to increasing visibility. One common mistake I see people solely rely on, is website speed. Typically, when you use certain tools that show the website speed being the reason your website isn’t optimized, they are usually third party apps. While speed can affect your online visibility, it is usually one of the lower factors to ranking your website within your niche on Google. Impact Marketing Solutions is going to present 3 SEO Hacks throughout this article that will help you start ranking on Google for customers that NEED your services or products!
The three most common, and easy to fix solutions to showing up higher on Google are:
- Using Alt Text within your images
- Using correct, up-to-date image files
- Having relative keywords
Throughout this article, I am going to go over each of these topics in-depth to help you have a better understanding of what each of these topics mean and how you can add/optimize each of these so that you have a better chance of properly optimizing your website and showing up higher on Google!
How to use Alt-Text within your website images
When we talk about alt-text, there can be a common misconception that just keyword stuffing your website with relevant keywords to your niche will help you show up higher on Google. While this can help you get ranked fast, it isn’t a long-term, nor effective strategy to staying ranked highly on Google.
What is Alt-Text?
Alt-text stands for “Alternative Text” and in simple terms, it is just a way to describe your image to Google so that when the Google robots are crawling your website, they can understand what the embedded image file is. Due to Google using “bots”, they can’t visually see what the image is in order to understand what you are trying to convey to your audience. This is where we use alt-text in order to describe the image to the Google bots so they know what it is about. When placing Alt-Text, you should use relevant keywords to your business, as well as an image about your business that isn’t a stock photo form the internet.
If you were a dog trainer in Utah, one way you could utilize this is by placing an image of a dog you trained, and describe it. You could use something like “Effective Dog training solution in Salt Lake City” for the alt-text. This keeps your image on topic and relevant for the website, your business, and describes what the image is about!
Below, I will show two images of where to place alt-text on two of the bigger CMS platforms for web design, WordPress and Shopify:
WordPress Alt-Text:
When you are in your WordPress dashboard, the easiest way to change your alt-text is by going to your “Media Library” in the left column of the dashboard. Once there, find the image you want to update, click on it, and BAM, you can change the Alt-Text!
Steps:
- Go to WordPress Dashboard
- Go into Media Library from left column
- Find the image whose Alt-Text you want to change
- Update and Save the new Alt-Text!
You can also change the alt-text directly on the image when building your website! If you are using a builder like Elementor, you find the image you are adding and in the right column, you will see it display the same information as seen above so that way, you know where on the website your image is shown, and can name it accordingly.
** Bonus Hack: When you upload an image file, before uploading it to your CMS, change the save file name to something relevant to a keyword you are targeting **
Shopify Alt-Text:
Shopify has changed a lot over the last 2 years and even changed how files are displayed and shown on your e-commerce website. That being said, it may be different from when you used to access your media in Shopify compared to even how it was listed 6 months ago!
Within Shopify you have a large amount of different tabs to choose from. Unlike WordPress, the media files are a little more difficult to find unless you know the platform!
To find the Alt-Text section on Shopify from the Dashboard:
- Find the tab labeled “Content”
- You will see a sub-section called “Files”
- Once in the files section you should see the list of images saved to your Shopify CMS account
- Select the image and get to editing!
** Bonus Tip Specific to Shopify: If you change the URL after uploading to Shopify, remember where the image was placed on your site. Unfortunately, Shopify doesn’t have real-time updates for URL changes and will cause your image to break on the website, so you either need to upload the file with a predestined keyword phrase or check your website after to ensure it didn’t cause issues on your site **
Proper Image File types to better optimize your website
Over the years, we have seen many different changes to the internet with new optimization factors and tricks you can use to speed up your website. One key factor that helps with page speed optimization is having the correct image file types. Each image file has a different purpose behind it and understanding those can make a world of difference behind optimizing your website for Google! We will discuss 4 of the main file types to use on your website and the when/where to use each one!
JPG Image File Format for SEO
JPG (or JPEG) is commonly used for photographs and images with intricate color details. Its small file size makes it ideal for faster website loading times, which positively impacts SEO by improving user experience and reducing bounce rates. However, it’s worth noting that JPG compression can slightly compromise image quality, which might affect visual appeal and, subsequently, user engagement. JPG isn’t commonly used in 2024 due to the sole fact that depending on the device you use, or image size you want displayed, it will likely come across grainy with low resolution.
Not to say you shouldn’t use JPG since it does tend to load on a web page faster, however I would only recommend using this file type for smaller image sizes like icons!
PNG Image File Format for SEO
PNG, preferred for images with transparency or sharp edges like logos or graphics, offers lossless compression. While PNG files are typically larger than JPGs, they ensure high-quality visuals, which can enhance user trust and perception of your website. Additionally, PNG’s support for transparency makes it advantageous for SEO when optimizing for visual elements like logos or infographics, potentially boosting brand recognition and recall. The main downside we see with PNG is due to the higher resolution, web page speeds do tend to be a bit slower loading which can hinder user experience and show that “Slow load speed” mentioned in the initial paragraph of this article.
WEBP Image File Format for SEO
WEBP, a newer image format developed by Google, combines the benefits of both JPG and PNG. It offers both lossy and lossless compression, resulting in smaller file sizes without significant loss of image quality. While not universally supported across all browsers yet, WEBP’s adoption is increasing, and it’s worth considering for SEO optimization. Its smaller file sizes can contribute to faster website loading speeds, improving user experience and SEO rankings. WEBP tends to be the best solution in most user cases due to the aforementioned reasons but the other significant reason is because it was developed by Google, Google tends to favor their own product over others. Yes, even robots play favorites…
SVG Image File Format for SEO
SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is a vector-based image format ideal for graphics, icons, and logos. Unlike raster formats like JPG and PNG, SVG images are composed of mathematical shapes rather than pixels, allowing them to scale infinitely without losing quality. This scalability makes SVG perfect for responsive design, enhancing SEO by ensuring images look crisp on all devices and screen sizes. Additionally, SVG files are typically small in size, contributing to faster page loading times and improved SEO performance.
** Bonus Design Tip about SVG: Use SVG format for your logo on your website. This will ensure that no matter the device or screen size, your logo file will never lose resolution and be able to scale across different devices with ease! **
When optimizing images for your website’s SEO, consider factors such as image content, quality requirements, compatibility with different browsers, and the scalability benefits offered by SVG. Choosing the right format can positively impact website performance, user engagement, and ultimately, your website’s search engine rankings.
Using Relevant Keywords
Keywords. What are they and how can they help your business rank on Google? Hopefully, you already have a good baseline about SEO and what it takes to rank on Google but if not, here is a quick lesson on Keywords and what they mean for SEO.
Keywords: Keywords are essential to ranking on Google. When the Google bots crawl your website, they look at the baseline structure in order to understand what your content is about. In order to better explain to Google what your website is about and how to present you to the right audience, we use “Keywords” to tell Google who you are and what you do. To understand keywords, you also have to understand “Key phrases” these tend to be what people search on Google when looking for Information, a Product, or a Service.
If you were an HVAC contractor, you would want to target Keywords such as “Furnace Repair”, “A/C contractor”, etc. But if you wanted Google to understand MORE about your business and what services you offer, you could target relevant Key Phrases such as “HVAC contractor in Salt Lake City”, “Plumbing company in Murray”, etc. This helps Google to understand more about you, your business, and allows you to target key phrases that people actually search on Google instead of just a word itself! Pretty cool, huh?
This tends to be a little bit harder to grasp because you have to actually put in some extra work to research the right keywords in order to find what works on Google or other search engines. There are many tools you can use to do “Keyword research” but the three best are: SEMrush, Google Search Console, and MOZ. They have free features to keep your budget low when just starting and when using search console, it feeds you live data so you can understand your audience better, track results, and learn where you need to improve!
** Bonus keyword hack: If you use an SEO plug-in like AIOSEO, YoastSEO, or RankMath, it allows you to tell Google what Keyword the page, post, or content you want to rank for is as well as add in “Related Keywords” so you don’t miss out on any search rankings! **
Conclusion
As we wrap this up, I hope it helps give you a better understanding of SEO for your business, and what areas you can optimize right away, on your own, to try and start ranking! SEO is a long-game, there are no shortcuts that can be made to help you get to the top result of search engines, and stay there over time. You should be constantly updating content on your website, adding posts, updating keywords, and targeting new areas if you want Google to read your website and rank you where you want to be!
If all of this information is still over your head, confusing, or you just simply don’t want to try and manage all of this on your own, you can book a FREE consultation call with Impact Marketing Solutions and get an overall analysis of your websites performance and where you can improve!
