Four Mistakes Even Good Websites Make With Images (and how to fix them)
This week, I just wrapped a practical exam for a web audit certification I’ve been pursuing.
The assignment involved a deep-dive into the subject website and, to better identify the opportunities for our subject site, we compared the site to three other direct competitors in their market.
I couldn’t help but notice a recurring issue with images on all four sites and I’m going to tell you what they were and how to fix them.
Using Bad Stock Photos
I know stock photos feel like the path of least resistance to getting a website done and released into the wild, but when you can avoid stock photos, you should. Or at the very least try to use images from a site that hosts attractive, higher-quality images you can source for your website and use commercially (with proper attribution).
Do not simply Google for a picture to stick on your site.
The quickest way to learn an expensive lesson about improper image attribution is to open your real or virtual mailbox and have a cease and desist letter with a 4-5 figure demand attached. So always make sure you understand the license on the image you select and that you execute it properly.
If you use a lot of images, you will probably find it is worth it to pay for a subscription service but there is always Unsplash for a pretty robust and less fake feeling catalog of images that are free for use in commercial applications.
Images licensed through my paid AdobeStock account | www.copywritingbylisa.com
When selecting images for your site, always look for high-quality images that clearly convey the feeling of success and satisfaction a customer can expect when using your product or service. Neil Patel equates good stock photo curation to a nod of respect for your visitors…no one is going to be fooled into thinking you are a successful real estate broker with that top image.
Those days on the world wide web are over, my friend.
One place where it is NEVER the right time for stock photos is on a page that is or suggests it is about your team or staff. No cheesy placeholder images. Make sure you have high-quality headshots or group photos on these pages. Nothing less will do. It’s an instant credibility and conversion killer to see Skippy the Stock Photo Office Guy anywhere near your site’s Contact or About Us pages.
Go with original photos when you can. When you can’t, use the highest quality stock images you can find (even if you have to pay for them). Always use real staff or team photos.
2. Zero Photo Captions
Just a quick mention here on how judicious use of photo captions can be a real enhancement to your website.
While you never want to risk over-optimizing your website, photo captions can help visitors consume the information you want to convey to them quickly or to clarify what may, at first glance, appear unclear. In a 2012 study, Kissmetrics found that:
“Captions under images are read on average 300% more than the body copy itself, so not using them, or not using them correctly, means missing out on an opportunity to engage a huge number of potential readers.”
When used sparingly and appropriately, photo captions can also be little sprinkles of SEO sugar throughout your site.
But ultimately, websites should always be about the user, so I agree with the SEO experts at Yoast: if a caption makes sense to improve the user experience, that should be the true litmus test to add one, SEO benefit notwithstanding.
A caption on this image probably doesn’t meet the standard of adding a photo caption…or does it? | Photo credit Toa Heftibe, Unsplash
Add photo captions when appropriate to improve the experience of your website visitors but remember, a well-placed photo caption can improve both consumption of content and your site’s image-based SEO.
3. Missing Alt Tags
Almost all the sites I audit make the mistake of not looking at how their images are functioning behind the scenes. Easily 95% of the websites I look at skip out on adding alt tags entirely.
This is a critical oversight for two very important audiences: search engines and people with disabilities. Although search engines can sometimes muddle through guessing what your image file represents, screen readers and other assistive devices cannot.
While the requirements to meet ADA guidelines can be unclear, a good standard to work from is:
“Web content should be accessible to the blind, deaf, and those who must navigate by voice, screen readers, or other assistive technologies.”
Essentially missing alt tags are going to throw errors on both an SEO audit and an accessibility audit and that is why we have to fix them.
The good news is, this is an easy and fun SEO task - and a quick win for making your website more accommodating to all visitors.
A good alt tag for your website images has two primary components:
when appropriate, an SEO keyword or phrase that matches the page’s subject matter or intent (“123 Main St. Little Rock AR 72207 primary bedroom”)
a clear description of the image (“a small houseplant on a yellow coffee table” or “happy couple signing a real estate contract”)
Pro tip: If there is text embedded in an image, Google can’t see that. Add it to your alt tag if it has relevance or improves the visitor experience.
From here on out, be sure to add an alt tag to every image you use (and set aside a few minutes a week to catch up on the ones you’ve missed). Your search engine will reward you and sight-impaired members of your audience will thank you.
4. Useless File Names
While I saved this for last, the truth is, your website’s image SEO starts with having a good image file name protocol. Whether you are using original images from your own photographer (go, you!) or well-curated stock images, hot off the press they all have one thing in common: lousy file names.
You are getting exactly zero SEO benefit from uploading IMG2456 to your site.
Instead, you want a file name that clearly and briefly tells search engines what they are “looking” at.
Put your focused keyword first and then clarify exactly what a search engine is supposed to see without relying on its machine learning.
If I wrote a dog-focused blog and I was writing an article titled “Snow Dogs” that featured images of poodles in the snow, I would adopt a naming convention like this:
keyword or focus keyphrase + subject of image
snow-dogs-red-standard-poodle
In my SEO tab, this image is called “website-images-file-name-demo.png”...file names aren’t always an exact science. Just develop a system for your site’s file names | Photo credit: Brooke Cagle, Unsplash
File names won’t always be perfect but to lay the most effective SEO image foundation, the most important thing to focus on is never leaving an image file name on your site that is meaningless gobbledygook.
If you are currently making any of these four image mistakes on your website, the time is now to correct them:
improve your image curation either with original images from your favorite photographer or by selecting images from a higher quality stock image site
use photo captions when appropriate to enhance the visitor experience, consumption of important material, and potentially search engine ranking
add alt tags for compliance with accessibility best practices and for better organic search engine ranking
build the foundation of your SEO image strategy with keyword-optimized and descriptive image file names.
Just a few clicks and keystrokes and you’ll have completed a quick win to improve image performance and function on your website.