The majority of people in lakeville-mn are aware that including featured photos on your WordPress website will help you attract more visitors. But did you know that properly configured featured pictures can significantly improve your search engine performance? Here are some fast suggestions on how to build SEO-friendly featured photos for your WordPress website, from start to finish.
First, pick a photo that appeals to you:
When choosing a superb featured image, make sure it’s one that’s eye-catching, relevant, and engaging to your audience. It’s also crucial to select a featured image size that complements your theme’s design.
Users prefer high-quality photos versus blurry, confusing images. Crisp, sharp photographs will also look better in the thumbnail versions of search results, and people will be more likely to click on them.
Make every piece you write online more intriguing by including images, preferably your own company images rather than commercial photos.
After that, resize and scale the image to make it load faster.
Visitors will not be able to view your site if it takes too long to load, and SEO will suffer as a result. Images have a significant impact on loading times, particularly when you load a large image and display it at a small size, such as using a 22001400-pixel image and displaying it at 250250 pixels. It’s still necessary to load the complete image!
As a result, make sure you scale the image to the desired size. You can also use Photoshop or a plug-in like Smush Image Compressing to optimize your sized photo for the web, which will automatically optimize your photographs during uploading. WordPress assists by automatically supplying the image in several sizes when it has been uploaded.
Your featured image should be at least 500 pixels wide, which is the recommended minimum size for social media sharing.
Then give your photos descriptive file names like this:
For SEO purposes, it’s critical to choose a descriptive file name. Instead of naming your photo “DSC2831.jpg,” rename it “sunrise-at-Jacksonville-beach.jpg” or something else related to your story.
Google claims that:
“The filename might provide Google with information about the image’s subject matter. Make your filename as descriptive as possible of the image’s subject matter. My-new-black-kitten.jpg, for example, is a lot more informative than IMG00023.JPG. Users can benefit from descriptive filenames as well: “If we can’t locate appropriate text on the website where we obtained the image, we’ll use the filename as the image’s snippet in our search results.”
You’re all set to add your featured image!
Featured photos in WordPress themes come in a variety of sizes by default. Are you still missing a featured image block? Make sure Featured Image is selected for viewing inside your editor by clicking on the “Screen Options” button in the top right corner.
Select the Featured Image Block by clicking on it:
Preparing to Add a Featured Image
Fill in the following information for your title and alternative text:
You’re ready to upload and link your featured image to your article now that you’ve chosen a beautiful image, sized it, and given it a name. Make sure to include Alt and Title tags that are relevant to your blog article when uploading. This gives Google valuable information about the image’s topic matter. Make sure the Alt Text contains the article’s SEO keyword and describes the image. You can also choose a theme-appropriate default size.
Make sure the Alt Text contains the article’s SEO keyword and describes the image.
Matt Cutts, a Google guru, explains how to optimize Alt Tags for your website:
The alt text will appear alongside the image and is intended to provide an alternative source of information for those who are unable to view the image in their browsers.
The alt text should describe the image in order to pique visitors’ interest in viewing it. If you upload a picture without an alt text, it will appear as an empty icon.
Search engines can use Alt Text to identify your image in addition to the image itself.
When creating your title text, you should include more information that is related to the subject of your item. Make sure to include your core keywords in both tags, but vary them to avoid keyword stuffing. When you overuse particular terms, it can result in major search engines temporarily or permanently blocking your website.
For the image, use the OpenGraph and Twitter Card tags.
When sharing on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and LinkedIn, Yoast SEO social tools make it simple to integrate your featured image.
If your URL post sharing doesn’t show your featured picture straight away after you’ve set everything up correctly on Facebook, flush Facebook’s cache in the URL Debugger.