Did you know images play a huge role in the performance of your website’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? It’s great to include lots of high-quality images on your website to make it more interesting for your audience. They are also great tools for incorporating keywords into your site! However, images can also directly impact the load time of your website. Check out the list below for more information on how to best use images to improve your SEO:

• File Size - Most websites have a lot of images and, as you can imagine, each image can be pretty large in file size which impacts the speed at which your site loads. They should be less than 1MB in file size to keep your website nimble. If you can get your images to less than 500KB while still looking good, even better!

• Alt Text - Alt text (alternative text) is a blurb of text that describes the image. It is read by screen readers for visually impaired users, shown if an image doesn’t load properly, and scanned by search engine bots. Alt text tells search engines what the image is about which helps your site will show up in image searches. Add it to your images to increase accessibility and improve your SEO by using keywords. You can add alt text to an image by opening the settings of an image block and typing into the alt text field. If you want to run an accessibility audit of your site, click here.

• Filename - Filenames are a great way to strategically incorporate keywords into your website. Keywords are words that match the search terms your ideal clients use to find websites like yours. When adding an image to your site, update the file name before uploading it. Use plenty of relevant keywords in the file and put dashes (-) in between the words. For example, if you have a postpartum doula practice that specializes in natural healing for parents in the Kansas City area, you can name a relevant image, “Postpartum-doula-practice-natural-healing-Kansas-City”.

This is just a teeny tiny sample of all that goes into your website's Search Engine Optimization but we will go more in depth over the next couple months to help you improve your SEO. 😄 In the meantime, click the button below to check out Squarespace’s SEO Checklist! Be sure to bookmark the link to it because it is seriously helpful.

For more information about formatting your website images, check out this article from Squarespace.

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