Squarespace SEO: Getting Image Ranking Results

Squarespace is a popular website builder that makes it relatively easy and straightforward for just about anyone to create a website fairly quickly.

While Squarespace is not free, it does offer a bunch of robust tools, including a drag-and-drop builder, a variety of templates, and powerful content management.

Moreover, it is also a hosting platform, and it also offers eCommerce functionality, making it popular for builders of online stores.

In this short post, we’re going to take a closer look at one prong of Squarespace SEO: getting images to show up in the image search results.

Optimizing Images: Basic Principles

Getting images to show up in the image search results is only one small aspect of SEO and it’s one that most agencies don’t focus on.

This is because the most important aspect of SEO is showing up in the organic SERPs. Most users don’t generally search for images specifically.

With that said, getting images to rank will increase the perception of your website and will also spread brand awareness.

So, what are some things you can do specifically to get images to rank?

Do Not Use Stock Imagery

First things first, and basic – do not use stock imagery. Google sees images as files, not as images, the way we do.

When crawling the page, it will see a file and if that file is not original, any authority that would be granted to it will just go to the original file.

So using duplicate files for your website will not be improving the user experience or helping your SEO, even if they are good – take your own pictures.

Compressing the Image File Size

Oftentimes the number one issue with on-page optimization is image file sizes. They are frequently so large they slow down the whole page.

Compressing image files is the way to go, and there are lots of free compression tools out there that you can use. Some of these are:

• Optimizilla
• Image Resizer
• Free Convert
• TinyPNG
• ShortPixel

This is just a short list of image compression tools, although there are others. Compressing your images will result in no loss of visual quality, but it can make your page load speeds much faster, and that is huge for SEO.

Adding Alt Text

This right here is probably the single biggest thing you can do in terms of optimizing an image, notwithstanding compressing the file so it loads faster.

Image files have an “Alternative Text” field that can be used to describe what the image shows. Keep the alt text short – only a few hundred characters at most, and use the field as an opportunity to drop in keywords that you want the image to rank for.

If you do optimize the image alt text field, whenever users search in the image results, there’s a better chance that images from your website will show up in the image results for those and related queries.

Adding Optimized Captions

Adding optimized captions to your images increases the page UX and that in turn produces a positive feedback loop. As Google uses engagement metrics to assign rankings, you need to find ways to keep users on your web pages for longer.

Renaming the Image File

If your image file title is a nonsense string of numbers and letters, rename it to something sensible, preferably a title that contains the same keywords as your alt text. This again will increase the likelihood that this image will show up in the search results.

Get Help from a Squarespace SEO Agency

Not sure where to start making these optimizations? Or are your problems far bigger than poorly optimized images?

Get help from a Squarespace SEO agency that specializes in your industry. They’ll help you come up with a cohort of reasonable, attainable keywords and should be able to do far more than just get your images to rank organically.

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