Real Estate SEO & Image Optimization
(Read this article for a more comprehensive guide to optimizing images for real estate websites)
Images play a crucial role in real estate websites, serving as a primary focus point for listings. However, what many people don't realize is that images also present an excellent opportunity to boost their SEO strategy. Here are some crucial ways to optimize your images for search engines and users:
- Use clear and concise alt tags for images
- Create simple and informative file names for images
- Alter the dimensions and compress images to reduce file size without losing quality
- Convert image files to next generation formats like WebP
- Make sure your images are responsive and mobile friendly
Alt Tags For Real Estate Images
Alt tags are short descriptions of images that serve as a means of informing search engines about their content.
When an image cannot be displayed, alt tags are shown, and they can also be read by screen-readers for users with impaired vision.
Additionally, alt tags help search engines crawl your page and establish associations between photos and keywords.
Image Title Tags
Image title tags are provide additional information about an image, appearing as a tooltip or a small pop-up text box when the cursor is placed over the image.
Title tags are not relevant to rankings, so user-experience and usefulness should be your top focus. As such, title tags should be as relevant and concise as possible.
Structured Data For Images
Structured data, also known as schema markup, is a form of code that aids search engines in understanding the content on your website.
Using various schema markup types allows for the addition of images, providing Google with more information about their purpose and what other content or information they relate to.
This information can then be displayed in search results, leading to a more efficient search process for users. The information contained in structured data will also help search engines understand the relevance and context of your images.
File Names For Images
Image file names can also be optimized for simplicity and relevancy.
- Image filenames should be simple and informative
- Use hyphens instead of spaces or underscores
- Avoid complex codes or symbols
File Size and Format
Perhaps the most important aspect of optimizing images is making sure they are properly formatted and sized. The sized of an image can refer to two different things: its dimensions and the amount of data in the file itself. Here are some best practices:
- Reduce the dimensions of an image to the smallest possible without compromising quality
- Run images through a compression tool to reduce the file size
- Save image files in next generation formats, like WebP, to further optimize their file size
Make sure to familiarize yourself with Google's own guidelines for image optimization.
Having your image files be as small as possible (while not compromising quality) is one of the quickest and most important ways to improve page speed. Page speed, in turn, has a direct effect on both user experience and page ranking. So don't overlook it!
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