Here’s a little secret that you may not know about all of those beautiful pictures of your work that you loaded to your website. Your website pictures probably aren’t helping your SEO.
Google doesn’t care about them. Yahoo doesn’t know they exist. Bing ignores them. And all of the other search engines will have nothing to do with them.
I’m here to tell you that not only is there a way to fix the problem, but you can actually make Google, Yahoo, Bing, and every other search engine love all of your pictures, and reward your website with great SEO.
The Reason Your Pictures Probably Don’t Mean Anything Right Now
What do you see when you are looking at a picture in your portfolio? If it’s a picture of a dining room, you probably see the nice table and chairs, the placemats that complement the wall color, the table setting to visualize a formal dinner, and maybe a nice flower arrangement as a centerpiece.
Do you know what Google sees in that same picture? A lot of pixels and the name of your photo, which is probably something like “IMG_3859.jpg”.
Translation, the beautiful picture of your excellent work is nothing more than gibberish to Google. Google is smart, but not smart enough to see the elegance of your after picture of the dining room, of a single family home in Anytown, that was unfurnished, for your client who is a Realtor.
That’s right. This picture, and every other picture on your website likely adds zero value to your website’s SEO in Google’s eyes.
Fortunately, your website visitors visually see the nice picture. But can I assume that the caption for the picture is “IMG_3859”?
It doesn’t have to be that way.
How to Let Your Pictures give Your Website Great SEO
It is actually easy to make sure all of those beautiful pictures on your website help your SEO. This will ensure that potential clients find your website in Google (and other search engines).
How? By simply adding descriptive text to two fields for each picture, “Title” and “alt-text”, your website will have pictures that not only look nice, but Google will understand what the pictures are.
Google understands words. The title and alt-text section for each picture is your way to tell Google, in words, exactly what all of those pixels mean:
Title – This is simply the title of the picture. The title is where you tell Google that it is an after picture of a staged dining room table.
Example: “Home staging after picture of dining room”
Alt-text (also called alt-tag) – This is the description of your picture. The alt-text is where you get very descriptive about your image and your project. History lesson – in the olden days of the internet (like 2010) when images would sometimes not load, the alt-text was displayed in place of the picture. But that rarely happens anymore, and now Google uses that information to understand more about the picture.
Example: “After picture of a dining room table in a home staging project for an unfurnished, single family home in Anytown, for a client who is a Realtor. This home staging project was completed by My Home Staging Company.”
Your picture now has context. You gave it a title and a description. Google now understands what the picture is about.
Consider each picture as a page in a book. Once you update these fields for all of the pictures on your website, they will tell a complete story. This story proves to Google that you are an authority of a home staging in Anytown. Google will have confidence to ranking your website high in searches, because Google now knows that the person who clicks on your website link will have a great experience.
And Google just wants to provide its users with a great experience.
In the video below, you we show you how to easily update these two fields on your own website:
So now you know the importance of title and alt-text and how easy it is to implement on your website. Don’t turn that dial, because there are actually more benefits to having a clear title and alt-text.
2 More Benefits from Titles and Alt-text
But wait, there are more benefits to adding titles and alt-text to all of the pictures on your website? Yes, there are!
Here are two more benefits to editing the titles and alt-text for all of your pictures:
- Your pictures will show up on the “Images” tab for Google searches. Many people are looking at pictures, and click through the pictures to get to websites.
- Your pictures will have good descriptions when people look at them. Instead of the caption saying “IMG_3859”, it will say “Home staging after picture of dining room”. Which do you think is more helpful and more professional to that potential client?
Final Thoughts on Website Photos
You likely have a lot of photos of your home staging projects on your website. However, those photos may not be providing your website and your visitors as much value as their potential.
Simply going through your website photos and adding descriptive titles and alt-text will significantly help your website’s SEO, and provide a better experience for your potential clients when viewing your pictures. The process takes time, but it will be well worth the effort.
Just be aware that once you make the changes to your website, it could takes months for Google to reward your SEO. The sooner you make the changes, the sooner your website will have great SEO!
