Optimize Your Ecommerce Product Images for Top Google Search Results: A Two-Step Guide

In today's digital landscape, the importance of visual representation in e-commerce cannot be overstated. Product images are often the first point of contact potential customers have with a product, and they can make or break a sale. However, it's not just about how good the images look; they also need to be optimized for SEO to ensure they appear in Google search results and drive more traffic to your website. In this article, we will be sharing a two-step guide on how to optimize your ecommerce product images for top Google search results.

Images play a crucial role in conveying information about a product quickly and efficiently. They can be thought of as a “thousand words in a single image” and should be optimized for SEO before being added to a marketplace like YeniExpo.

By following these steps, you can ensure that your product images are optimized for both aesthetics and searchability, giving your products the best chance of being seen and sold.

1. Prior to uploading your product images to your listing, optimize them for faster loading times during customer browsing.
2. Ensure that your images contain all the necessary information, such as appropriate file names and alt tags, to aid in their indexing by the Google search engine.

Properly optimizing images in this way will increase their visibility in Google image search results and drive more traffic to your product page.

Step 1:  Images should have the following metadata information to rank high on google:

According to WPPromote, there isn't too much to do with your image filename, but you should keep two things in mind.

• First, give descriptive and informative filenames for your images that contain relevant keywords. Filenames are sometimes used for the image's snippet in Google image search results so it's important they are written with users in mind.
• Second, use hyphens (-) between the words in the filename; it's best practice.

Image Metadata:

1. Filename
2. Size
3. Title *
4. ALT Text *
5. Description *
6. Caption *
7. Keywords (#Hashtags) *

All you need to do before loading your product images to YeniExpo, is prepare the image Filename and use the correct Size of the image file. 

Images are preferred to be squared with white background (could be other backgrounds as well, but white is best). Product image dimension should be a minimum of 800 x 800 pixels, but 1500×1500 pixels is the prefered and recommended size.

While larger image sizes may not be necessary, if you only have access to larger images, it is acceptable to use them. However, please note that larger images may take longer to upload to the YeniExpo platform during the process of creating your product listings. Our system is designed to automatically reduce the size of images once they have been uploaded, and if the image is not in a square format, it will be cropped accordingly to fit the platform's specifications.

YeniExpo system will also automatically generate the other metadata for your images. It will be extracted from the filename. 

Step 2:  How to SEO optimize the Product Image file name

According to SEjournal “Google uses the file names of images to gauge exactly what the subject of an image is.

• By optimizing file names in accordance with optimizations of alt text and title text, it is possible to provide increased understanding that will help your images rank in image search.
• For the most part, you don't need long file names with long descriptive text.
• The keyword phrase that mostly describes the image is fine.
• Just make sure that your file name text also accurately reflects what the image is about.”

DON'Ts

Do not load a very large image higher than 1500×1500 pixels. Large image sizes slow down the image uploading time. Every millisecond counts. Slow loading pages are abandoned quickly. Your goal is to have the customers enjoy their browsing experience and not bounce away.

Do not leave the image filename as image-1.jpg, photo1.jpg, or similar uninformative names. This will not help at all with SEO optimization or search engine ranking.

DOs

Resize your image to proper size. While resizing your images, compress it also. You can use these online tools like https://imageresizer.com/ to help you do that. Or you can download the Bulk image resizer and compressor and you can do this in bulk on your desktop.

Change the resized and compressed image name to describe the product you are selling. For ranking higher on google, write the name in English (other languages are ok, but it is best to write it in English for worldwide reach).

Example:

As you can see in the above product image, it has the following filename:

Balnea-Home-Milet-Turkish-Towels-Peshtmals-Organic-Pure-Cotton-380gr-YeniExpo-Export-4.jpg

1. Balnea-Home: is the Brand Name of the product (Optional)
2. Milet-Turkish-Towels-Peshtmals-Organic-Pure-Cotton-380gr:  Detailed Product Name (Best practice)
3. Model Number:  (Optional) This is good to include in the file name,  It helps in online search results.
4. YeniExpo: Our platform name (Optional)
5. Export: is the purpose of this product listing (Optional)
6. 4: Is the image number in this series of images for this product, You can add in the front ot the end of the image name (Optional if you have multiple images for the same product)

Choosing the right image format

For images, the best image format for website promotion, we recommend the following:

1. JPG:  Choose JPEG or JPG for large photos or illustrations: it will give you good results in terms of colors and clarity with a relatively small file size. Our system automatically converts the JPEG images to WebP. It will produce high-quality results with smaller file sizes and faster loading speed.
2. PNG:  Use PNG only if you want to preserve background transparency; otherwise, we don't recommend it since it creates a large file size and that impacts the page loading speed.

Benefits of Optimized Product Images

• Improved search visibility: Properly optimized images can rank higher in search engine results, which can lead to increased traffic to your website.
• Faster loading times: Optimizing images for performance can reduce their file size, which can help your website load faster and improve the user experience.
• Increased engagement: High-quality images can be more engaging for visitors, which can increase the chances of them staying on your website longer, viewing more pages, and ultimately converting into customers.
• Better user experience: Optimizing images can make them appear clearer, sharper and more easily understood, which can create a better user experience.
• Better mobile browsing: Optimizing images for mobile devices can ensure that they look good on smaller screens, which can be important for mobile users, who are a fast-growing segment of the population.
• Reduced hosting costs: Smaller images take less space on server and bandwidth so it can save your hosting cost.
• Better Accessibility: Optimizing images also help visually impaired people understand image content by providing them with alternative text descriptions, which can improve accessibility.