How to optimize your image SEO for free

Why should you care about optimizing your site's image SEO? Here are a few reasons:

• Google Images accounts for over 25% of all web searches (source).
• When image blocks appear at the top of regular Google search results, about 30% of the time an image is clicked rather than the text results below it (source).
• Over 50% of online shoppers are excited about upcoming visual search technologies: snapping photos to instantly view similar products online (source).

The most important element of image SEO is making sure your images have alt text: meta tags that describe the contents of each image. Alt text helps your product images appear higher up in web searches.

Some clarifications before we start the how-to:

• Here, we're not talking about image compression (shrinking the file size of images so that pages load faster), though the Premium plan of SEO Optimizer does that as well.
• SEO Optimizer will not change your image files at all. It will only add alt text to your site's code.
• You can't see alt text on your site. Like other meta tags, it is code in the background of your pages, like this:

Without that code, your images are virtually invisible to search engines. But the good news is that SEO Optimizer can tag your images with alt text for free! Here's how.

1. Go to Optimize Images in the app

2. Set your alt text template

We recommend using the default template that is already there, but you can customize it if you wish. If you're not sure what those variables in brackets mean, you can find an explanation of them in our full guide to templates. When you're ready, click Save Template.     

3. Click Sync Images