It’s astonishing how simple image SEO for blogs was for many years.

Yet it got way more complex by now.

Can you still get image search traffic from Google?

Is it even worth it? Yes and yes!

Some simple image SEO best practices can go a long way!

Let me explain below in more detail!

How I received most Google traffic from images

I’ve been ranking very high on Google Image Search with the images that illustrate my posts for many years.

My images were so popular on Google that I got more traffic via Image Search than the text based Google search.

It happened despite ranking high for the likes of

• [seo blog]
• [advanced seo]
• [url seo]

Image traffic is not always valuable without making it useful.

Yet the first step is to get that traffic at all.

That gets increasingly harder over the recent years. Why?

Google shows images on site and offers fewer incentives to click through.

How to implement simple image search optimization techniques

Let’s take a look at the simple image SEO best practices for Google Image Search traffic then.

And how to actually implement those simple image search optimization techniques in real life.

This is based on my actual experience of two decades blogging for business.

The title of the page and the headline of the post should be corresponding to the image.

“A Red Apple Tastes Better” should be followed by red-apple.jpg

The post or body text below should deal with the same topic as the image or literally describe it.

Here it’s apples or more specifically a red apple and its superior taste.

The image caption (the text directly below the image) should focus on the image subject:

“Tasty red apple from Italy” would be a good caption in our case.

The image size should be at least 400*300 pixel but ideally bigger.

Thumbnails do not rank well. Full size images perform better.

Google’s advanced image search starts with 400*300 pixels.

The image name should be something like keyword1-keyword2.jpg:

red-apple.jpg or tasty-red-apple.jpg or apple-italy.jpg – You get the point.

The file type should be JPG, PNG, AVIF or WebP – Portable Network Graphics and Web Photos perform best.

WebP is a format introduced by Google so no wonder they prefer it. It also ensures the smallest file sizes and highest quality.

The alt attribute (NOT tag!) should be as descriptive as possible: “This ripe tasty red apple from Italy has just the right color to sell”.

Skip the spammy and keyword stuffed alt attribute and use it for the visually impaired instead.

Do you need even more specific guidelines with code examples?

Google has it’s on guide on image SEO best practices that covers the details in more depth.

Is Google Image Search traffic worth optimizing for?

Once these image SEO best practices are in place you can think about what to do with all this Google Image Search traffic.

Ask yourself this question: is Google Image Search traffic worth optimizing for you?

It depends! For me it’s sheer load.

The images are usually just illustrating my posts metaphorically.

Some are screenshots and data charts. Yet these rarely get significant traffic.

For most blogs image search traffic could be helpful especially in case you sell art prints.

There are several ways to make image search traffic useful.

I explain these in my other image search engine optimization posts.

When you just add images as metaphors to illustrate your posts like I do the traffic is not that easy to make use of.

Many of the searches are off topic then and the searchers only interested n grabbing the images.

Ideally you know upfront what to do with the Google Image Search traffic!

This way you can ensure the effort spent on image SEO is not wasted.

When your business model is aligned with your visual content you can make money of it directly in the best case!

* Creative Commons image by Dan Foy