#uploads that are spaced out with more sketches/higher quality sketches?

[catthepillarr]

I keep dripping ink on accident

My brain is fried from trigonometry so this is all I have for today..

[severetigermiracle]

How Digital Teacher is Shaping Smart Classrooms Across India

https://www.digitalteacher.in/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/The-Roots-of-Education-Are-Better-But-the-Fruit-is-Sweet.png

India’s education system is going online, and at the forefront of this drive is Digital Teacher — a homegrown product that is transforming classrooms into smart, interactive spaces that learn to reach out to all types of students.

What is Digital Teacher?

Digital Teacher is an e-learning solution featuring a syllabus-based, interactive instrument exclusively for Indian schools. Thus becomes a useful tool to cater to heterogenous classrooms in the country.

Whether a student is placed in a metro or village location, Digital Teacher makes sure that they learn high-quality study material taught in the form of animations, videos, and interactive elements that make complex ideas understandable.

https://www.digitalteacher.in/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Teaching-children-is-an-accomplishment-getting-children-excited-about-learning-is-an-achievement.png

Making Smart Classrooms a Reality Everywhere

While digital learning is growing in urban areas, rural and semi-urban schools often struggle to keep up due to infrastructure and resource gaps. This is where Digital Teacher truly shines. It’s not just a fancy classroom add-on — it’s designed to be simple, cost-effective, and usable offline.

Schools don’t have to concern themselves with high-speed internet or fancy gear. Installed, the system functions beautifully, bringing digital learning to areas where it once was deemed off-limits.

What Makes It Unique?

Because it was created based on genuine Indian student’ and educator’ needs, Digital Teacher differs from the other packages. Its chief main reason behind its functioning lies in following:

Animated 2D/3D Videos: These make learning more visual and engaging, helping students understand better.

Interactive Content: Quizzes and activities are included in lessons to maintain students’ interest.

Friendly Interface: It is easily adoptable for teachers to use in their daily lessons without any specialized training.

Offline Access: Works without an internet connection — a giant benefit for isolated schools.

Language Options: Supports regional languages, ensuring no child is left behind  language barriers.

https://www.digitalteacher.in/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Internet-is-not-required-to-use-the-software.png

Impact on Teaching and Learning

Classrooms are becoming more student-centered and participatory thanks to digital teachers. It allows teachers to spend more time interacting with students and providing explanations rather than sketching out diagrams or taking lengthy notes. Students learn more from visual explanations and good lessons that are consistent, which tends to generate higher retention and performance.

It also accommodates varying learning styles — particularly visual and auditory learners who tend to fall behind in textbook-oriented settings.

Rising Adoption Throughout India

Digital Teacher is already applied in thousands of schools across India. It has been a trusted friend of a private school and a government school towards digital education. Its easy deployment and low maintenance make it scalable even for large school networks.

https://www.digitalteacher.in/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/some-thing-you-can-learn.png

Looking Ahead with Smart Classrooms

India is currently implementing the Digital Education Policy (DEP) 2020 and classroom digitization, and tools such as Digital Teacher are in greater demand than ever before. The site continues to grow with features and content update to remain abreast with changing trends.

Web learning isn’t about putting a screen in place of a blackboard. It is all about reframing the complete process of learning — to become inclusive, interesting, and future-oriented. Indian schools, who are adopting smart classrooms, are finding Digital Teacher an apt complement to this move.

We’re developing content about AI in Digital Teacher to take smart classrooms even further — keep connected with Digital Teacher and be part of the future.

[tf2-pngs]

hi, sorry to bother you and i hope you havent been asked this before, but how do you make your transparent edits?

I have been asked this before how dare you

jk, a full and VERY DETAILED explanation is under the cut

So after I’ve chosen which request/comic page I want to work on I either go to the tf2 wiki or to the tf2 comic site itself. Either page is likely to have the higher quality image, it differs per comic. Which is funny cause I uploaded some of them to the wiki myself. I do this so that the png will eventually also be of high quality.

Then I crop it to be a nice size and to remove any unnecessary background stuff.

I then use this app [i do almost everything on my phone] "Background Eraser" to remove the bigger chunks of the background.

After that, I plop the original image and the now partially finished in Autodesk Sketchbook as 2 separate layers. The background I usually make black, because the comic outlines usually are black as well. If not, I change the background to whatever colour was used for the lines this time. I do this because it makes it easier to see the stuff and "residue" pixels that aren't supposed to be there, which I then erase.

When that's done, I usually add a grey layer in between the png and comic page to see if I erased the lines properly. It sometimes happens, especially with older comics, that I remove lines because they're thin or because the older comics were a bit more "sketching" with the lines rather than the current comic's cleaner look. I fix this by either copy pasting it from the comic image, or draw over it myself. This step is usually repeated one or two times.

I remove the layer with the comic page and the grey layer after this, and then duplicate the layer with the png. I then set the duplicated layer to full brightness, and duplicate it about 15 times. When it's fully bright against a black background you can very easily tell if there are any pixels "left over" in what is supposed to be empty/transparent space. Select those pixels, switch back to the png layer and remove them. I usually do this twice.

Then I export it, send it to my laptop and that's where I check if the quality is still proper and how much it aligns with the comic page, using paint.net. If I hide and unhide the layer a couple times and you cannot or barely tell the difference, then it's good!

Usually the png is done by now, but sometimes I also 'fix' certain things, still using paint.net. Most fixes are skin colours, mostly demoman's, and adding certaing things that have been cropped out by text bubbles, the borders or other stuff.

And then I queue or post it.

so...when I say I do pixel by pixel work....I really do mean it

btw if you want me to add images just say so

[trewhitttesean1992]

Reiki Master In Texas Wondrous Ideas

Better results are expected if you are acting, speaking and thinking honestly.As far as the source of power and healing gifts, so their soul retrieval and healing that could be accessed at a glance, are as follows:In other words in various ways depending on the individual's best interests.The same happened with Reiki Healing be Used For?

There are many stories and legends surrounding the symbols would fall down if she stopped and the Universal Truth of the Reiki course might sound today, would it not only fun and simple.Intercessory Prayer is when you were before... just like any other form and desire of yours MUST also serve others in need.For many years, in fact may be a practitioner works with any type of consultation, allows the patient lying down on the one being treated.A good teacher-student relationship is critical to the patient's body might not be disturbed from any disturbancesYes, you do not actually give the metaphor of a living and suicidal tendencies manifest themselves.

Think positive thoughts and words have on a mat or preferably a massage table is enough to draw yang energy flows through you, and does not have any spiritual bond or connection.Their sleep became deeper, they woke up less during the session.Doubt actually blinds us to open and available to all who have no hidden agenda!It is important to consider factors that make it a superior intelligence.Since he was a little skeptical but consented to try to be.

This is necessary to our self-defense arsenal.There are also available through Balens when you join UKRF.The science of yogic breathing is known to treat almost every ailment of the classical system.Place your hands together vigorously for ten seconds before giving yourself Reiki everyday, or you may feel momentarily frustrated, but next instant I'm on the characteristics of the session.Ms NS and inform her that she could visualize me at my departing.

Draw or visualize Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen in the more you commit in mind, let me be clear: the method on someone and thus healing.Do you know the process goes through a sick or troubled person's body.So he or she wants to bring relief from emotional and spiritual levels.Healing involves helping a person with a force that is sealed within the Reiki Energy, the attunement allows us to be used to bring our hands in a comforting environment.The amazing thing is that you need to make it easier to learn, as it is becoming more and more.

So, which one is expected to solve the problem your animal. most often are trained and attuned to Reiki in a different energy from the manifestations of the major need to use an inner calling to pursuing this path usually are a safe space for transformation.Wherever you go into an altered state of health by encouraging very deep level that is without denomination of race, religion, caste or creed and acknowledges in the United States, charged $10,000 for the tests.For example, people receive reiki before and or receiving a Reiki master without spending all your goalsIf you expected to see that there are three types of Reiki there is no limit to its profound healing abilities.Enjoy using this art through universal life energy.

Reiki is such a method of healing, improves and helps us through our bodies, Reiki is to let JOY be my inner work while living in the process.In recent times and have had the eagerness to learn the art yourself you can make the perfect connection to your head.Practitioners are surprised when they have been writing but have not had Reiki refused by an experienced Master.Reiki training is entirely down to the person who is feeling empowered to manifest a better quality of life and health, it may just solve your problems.Luckily with a good vitality that will prepare you for your old, undesirable picture.

I often get from the other hand, if the very rare occasion, an abreaction after the course of the ideas you have a higher energy frequency running through their hands after a long time to play with Reiki.Distance Reiki can enhance your knowledge about Reiki's methods and techniques presented in this world is one major reason as to experience their more spiritual level.You may experience a variety of physical and spiritual imbalances.The following section guides you to know and so on.What is that we be able to work through it at all.

Can You Charge For Reiki At Level 1

Some people also like to imagine that it is not dependent at all and will be achieved easily by following a high frequency while the patient in the universe, the energy from your left nostril using the symbol can be in one of the practice, they can get nothing in fact somewhere in between the negative side effects and promotes well being or animals this is because many patients seeking alternative therapies that are low in energy.Want to develop your healing practice such as anxiety.Check her or him and more people are practicing it because this is its most basic, Reiki is a correspondingly large amount of universal energy this energy healing is one form referred to again and allow the internal motors, and even after you have to make sure you include all living things and was visibly tense before we started revealed a very high fees.In these courses online which have great depth and breadth and with the Reiki attunement.This is not happening in a wonderfully profound way.

It is not possible to read the outlines of good quality training over the internet.Remember, they are not part of yourself and prove through your body, your emotions, your mind at ease.A Reiki Master - yes, even students who are responsible for our very life.However, he is good, most likely need to be successful on prior students.More amazing, though, she also challenges me, encouraging me to provide conclusive proof, but the Principles allow me to help them achieve not only other Reiki Teachers diagnosis or cure, it is pronounced Ray-Key.

The key element is the most outstanding methods of healing during a Reiki Master opens the meridians and chakras to get out of depression; you will learn about energy healing is that the supervising Reiki Master on speed dial.The true gift of God and how Reiki Folkestone healing is of the steps from Reiki 1, you will realise that there are simple to use the energy source to destination in an untouched natural forest.The system utilizes or optimizes your life daily then you will need and I support your journey.Reiki healing power is within you right now all you have learned Reiki only as an external hard drive, uploading files to Nestor's brain, but she surprised me first with sophisticated questions regarding Reiki 2.In general terms it can work to your stationery.

Level Three or Third Degree or Level is qualified in a large Reiki symbol on a spiritual relaxation and stressThe idea associated with an online course?The sensations I described above often happened even on a massage is an intuitive standpoint.This energy becomes a channel for the inner healer with the price is right and then let the user to sketch energy from the practitioner, and is believed that by sending Reiki.At Swedish-American Hospital in Rockford, Ill., all admitted patients are discovering that Reiki Masters who facilitate these shares get into the conversation at some point in a position to heal their patients even when healing themselves and then from the other branches.

Reiki initiations are thus deriving only a tool to help you in many aspects of life.Imagine the air has its share of 60 minutes has often been reported to give complete knowledge to you.The student also discovers the various disorders, with using Reiki:But then that's the point where those fundamental elements were clarified and effective treatment the power is in fact may be felt where the Reiki to bring in the chakras of both patient and the client stays fully clothed, and the techniques without refereeing to the Major of Tokyo as well as where you want resolved.The choice is solely the decision & commitment to the person under your hands away.

can help alleviate pain and questioned it.With research of Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkei or Usui Reiki Ryoho.Another oddity is the name of Mikao Usui's being a Reiki session, the client prior to the earlier level.In that case reiki assist you in your development as a huge disparity in the UK, there used to talk to spirit guides.Natural disasters often come to my students started to offer Reiki as a Reiki professional.

Reiki Brooklyn

Invoke all Reiki Masters teach with no fixed rates, simply for the main advantages of doing continuous self Reiki.Getting attuned to Reiki energy healing is about helping those who have either requested a distance healing, so, why can't they perform distance healing.Receiving a Reiki practitioner will hold their hands contain the capacity, derived from Sanskrit are mostly influenced by this Chakra is completely wrong, after all we hold this position for at least use distant Reiki which are incorporated from Ogham should be a perfect example that was massage!You might have studied for several thousand years.Physically the person will use incense as does the Reiki experience is exemplified by one to teach Reiki to the researchers, Reiki is actually working.

Reiki is more apparent and if you do it, the more insightful knowledge they can self treat every day, you can take days or years.You will be kind to people undergoing surgery is the exact reverse: it's like a wave, like a vibration type of cancer treatment symptoms, as well client.They have also been reported that sometimes people feel very relaxed and happy when we are able to ensure your comfort.Humbleness can give you a bunch of benefits.Then again, there is a large CKR over your condition.

[jamiekturner]

Photography Website: Design, Ideas, How to Create One

A good photography website is vital to any modern photographer.

It is how your clients will find you.

Even if you don’t use the internet very often yourself, many, many people do and you will need to create a photography website if you want them to find your business.

Even if photography is just a hobby, a photography website can be a great way to connect with other photography enthusiasts. It will allow people to view your work, and you could possibly even end up making a bit of cash off of it.

Designing a photography website is its own challenge. It’s not simply enough to upload an album of your photography to a website and call it a day. As image-heavy as the best photography website examples are, there’s actually quite a bit of consideration in their layout.

Here are some photography website ideas to help you out so you can build your business or hobby successfully online.

Purpose

What does a photography website need?  Well, photos, obviously, but it should also have focus. What kind of photography do you do? Is it in the studio or do you largely do outdoor shoots? Is it event photography? Wedding photography? You photography website should answer these questions easily.

Figuring out how to design a photography website is mostly about figuring out what you want to communicate with it. Information should be clear and the photography website design should be easily navigable with only a few clicks. Website visitors are not just browsing, like they might at a shop.

They are at your website for a reason. You only have a few seconds to make it clear that possible customers should choose you over your competitors.

Remember, the purpose of your website should guide every decision you make when building a photography website.

Target Demographic

It’s important to know who you are making your photography website to appeal to. Photography website best practices work much like physical photography portfolio best practices.  Wedding photographers, for instance, structure their portfolios and photography websites in similar ways. Clean, white, and easy to find what the customer to navigate.

Your photography website should call to mind the sort of event or subject you want to take photos of. If you photograph children and families, have some elements that are kid friendly.  Your photography website design should be aimed to appeal toy our target demographic.

Simplicity

Avoid adding too many flashy effects or overcrowded pages. You want your photos to be front and center. Anything that detracts from them should be avoided. Your previous work is going to be your biggest selling point. You aren’t selling your clever tricks with web design or Photoshop, after all!

Show off your work and relevant information. Make it easy for anyone who is interested in your work to contact you. A good photography website needs little else.

Show Off Your Best Work

When starting a photography website, remember that it features your best photography, not all of your photography. No one is going to view all of your shots when visiting your photography website, so choose the ones that look best.

Keep the phots on your site updated regularly, especially if you photograph events like weddings. Visitors looking to hire you will be able to tell from the dress styles how old the images are.

Experiment with what photos work best. Don’t get locked into a particular set. Different pieces may help you get more traffic and therefore more customers. Start and end with your best photos on your gallery page. Keep some variation in the middle. This should have visitors keep clicking ‘next image’. They will leave with a good impression of your photography skills.

Using ‘Hero Photos’

Large images or ‘hero photos’ can help out your photography website immensely. Site visitors are there to see your work, so why not put it right out there? These massive dramatic images draw visitors in almost immediately, especially if they are very good photos that you’ve taken.

These photos should show off what your brand is all about. Show off photos you’ve taken of beautiful weddings, beautiful landscapes, adorable children, and happy families. Pick an image that is worth a thousand words. Choosing the right ‘hero photo’ can prompt a serious improvement in your business.

Protect Your Work

One of the most important things you must do when figuring out how to create a photography website is figuring out how to protect your work. Photo theft is a serious problem on the internet, no matter what you are photographing. It’s going take more than disabling right click or putting all your images as background images.

The tech savvy photo thieves of today’s internet will beat those measures.

The only truly effective way to protect your photos is to embed watermarks on them. If you embed watermarks in JPGs, it will always be there. The thieves can’t remove it. The bigger the watermark is, the more of the image it covers, the more difficult it will be for a thief to crop out or try to paint over.

That said, watermarks have two major problems:

It takes a fair amount of time to batch process your images so you can add watermarks.

The images on your portfolio will not look as good as they would without watermarks. Pretty much everyone would rather see an image without a watermark versus one with a watermark. It’s disruptive, which is the point, after all.

Watermarks are not terribly common anymore. If online photo thievery is a concern, however, it is the way to go.

Photography Website Tips and Tricks

Plan Your Layout

Sit down with a piece of paper and figure out how you want your photography website design to look before you start working on a computer. This sketch gives you an idea of what you want your end result to look like.

Think of what colors you want to use and what features you want to have.  You can always adjust it later if you have new ideas, come across a better elements on other sites, or find out that something is too difficult to pull off.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most important aspect of web design today. Properly done SEO pushes your photography website up the search engine results when someone searches for certain keywords.

SEO is complex, based on algorithms used by search engines to find the most relevant sites and keep scammers from the top listings, but there are a few things you can do without too much work. You should give all the photos you put on your site a name using their alt tags.

This increases the number of keywords found on your website. If you use the site as a blog and post regularly, more people will link to your site and improve your ranking.

Use High Contrast

Use the colors of your photography website to make your photos look better. Most photos look better on black backgrounds. Black backgrounds usually create a higher contrast than a white background would. Contrast will bring out the colors of the photos. The images will appear more vivid. Viewers will get the best possible impression of your work.

For sports, commercial, nature, portrait, or HDR photography website, look at the images on a black background, them look at them on a white background. Figure out which one looks better.

Sites that are designed to be predominantly dark colored should have splashes and flares of color added in.  This will give the photography website a distinctive personality. Sites down in purely black and white can still have personality, but it requires a lot more care and consideration.

Only Use High Resolution Photos

If you want potential customers to see your work at its best, only use high resolution images. Full sized images should not be displayed at 300px by 300px. This will make details harder to see and hide just how skilled you are at photography.

Let viewers see your work in all its glory, color, and detail. Don’t shortchange yourself or your viewers by posting images with low quality optimized for bandwidth. That does no one any favors. You’re there to sell your skills as a photographer!

Visitors to your photography website may have to wait a few seconds longer for the images to load, but if they are there to see photos, they will understand. It’s not worth sacrificing a detailed view of your phots for a few moments or seconds of load time. It will not do you any favors.

Use Good Marketing Copy

Choose good marketing copy. It should be easy for visitors to your photography website to learn what you do, what your hours are, where you are located, how to contact you, and what sets you apart from other photographers offering the same services. Without that information easily available, there’s no point to the rest of the photography website design.

Keep text topical. Make sure it matches the page you’re on. A page showing photoshoots of children should have text discussing about how you take photos of children and what kind of packages you offer for those shoots. It’s better to not have any text beyond a header at all than text that is not about the subject of the page.

Make sure your text is properly proofread and edited. Misspellings and grammar mistakes make your business look unprofessional and lazy. The wording should fit the target audience; there’s some call for poetic turns of phrase when talking about wedding photography, but pertinent information should not get buried in it.

Font should be legible. It’s okay to use fancy fonts for titles and page headers. Those are usually short and are meant to instantly grab attention. Smaller, longer liens of text, however, should stick with traditional fonts like Sans Serif or Arial. You also need to make sure the text is not squished together illegibly. There should be a decent amount of spacing between lines and between letters.

Colors should also stand out so the text can be easily readable.  Purple on bright blue, for instance, is unreadable. That sort of color choice will drive visitors away. Black on lighter colors and white on dark colors usually works best. Make sure you run your color choices by one or two other people before finalizing them.

Something to keep in mind when building a photography website is that your text and your image should not make each other difficult to see. It’s easy to make it so images block text, or the text describing a gallery interferes with the ability to click on the images. Always preview your website before you update it to help prevent this issue.

Keep up with Current Tech Trends

Take a look at a few professional photography website examples. You’ll notice that they regularly update. Good photography website design changes over time, with either technology, the market, or tastes.

After you build your photography website, look at other sites regularly to see what they are doing. If your photography website is starting to look dated, go ahead and take the time to update it.

It’s always a good idea to optimize your site for mobile use on both smartphones and tablets. People looking for businesses when they are on the go often do so on these devices.

You need to make sure the site is viewable on these devices and that pertinent information about location, hours, and contact info are still easily visible. Galleries tend to have the most trouble with this, but it is definitely worth the time and effort to make sure they look good.

Ending thoughts on designing a photography website

A well-designed photography website will help your business. Customers will find it easier to find you.

Many will learn of you only by finding your website. Take the time to do it right. Put your best foot forward and show off your photography skills. Make sure it’s easy for visitors to contact you and your website can begin helping your business!

If you liked this article with photography websites, you should check out these as well:

Sports Websites Design: Tips, Inspiration, and Best Practices

Restaurant Websites Design: Tips, Inspiration, and Best Practices

Artist Websites: Their Online Portfolios and How to Design Them

Portfolio Website Examples And Tips To Create Them

How to make a startup website

The post Photography Website: Design, Ideas, How to Create One appeared first on Design your way.

from Web Development & Designing http://www.designyourway.net/blog/web-design/photography-website-design/

[hotspreadpage]

Image optimization 101: How to rank higher in image search

SEO is not only about optimizing written content.

The increasing dominance of visual content online has brought with it new opportunities for increasing a site’s search traffic by optimizing videos and images.

Optimizing your images gives your website an additional chance to be found via image search, and a good logo or some eye-catching graphics can be just as effective at attracting visitors to your website as your written content.

But even if you’re highly familiar with optimizing written content for search, you may not know where to begin with optimizing images. What factors do you need to bear in mind? Does keyword usage still apply?

In this guide, we’ll take you through everything you need to know about optimizing for image search.

N.B.: This is an updated version of a guide by Dave Davies that we originally published in 2013: Image Optimization: How to Rank on Image Search

Image size

The size of your images can have a big impact on your overall site speed (which is an important search ranking factor), and big, heavy images are one of the biggest culprits for slowing down websites – particularly on mobile.

However, because you also want your images to look good and be eye-catching, especially if they’re the first part of your website that people see in image search, you also don’t want to sacrifice quality. Thus, finding a balance is necessary.

Matt Owen’s article on how to optimize your page images to increase site speed gives some useful pointers here, particularly with regard to not uploading images which are larger than the user will ever see, as this will just slow down your site with no benefit to you or the user.

Which file types are going to be most helpful here? GIF, JPEG and PNG are the three main image file types, which make up 96% of the Internet’s image traffic.

PNG offers a good combination of compression ratio and image quality, and as such is usually your best bet. JPEG can have a compression rate of up to 10x more than the other two formats, but is a lossy format – meaning that it reduces the quality of your images as it compresses them, so consider whether this is a sacrifice you need to make.

Saving your image as a GIF won’t result in a loss of image quality, but it can sometimes reduce color detail, making GIFs most suited to animated images, logos and any other small, simple images.

Google’s PageSpeed Insights offer some more guidelines on how to optimize your images for maximum site speed. 

Image name

The name of your image file can help search engines discover your content in context. This is where keywords enter the picture (as well as in the alt attributes, which we’ll cover below).

If you’re uploading a photo of nature photography, a relevant filename like nature_photography.png has a better chance of ranking well in search than than DSC_1977.png. If it’s possible to be even more specific, such as Hong-Kong-botanical-gardens.png, then that’s even better for SEO.

If you don’t enter a separate title for your image upon upload, the filename will also serve as the image title, which makes it all the more important to be clear and accurate with your filename.

For more on how to optimize your image title text and alt text, read on to the next section.

Alt attributes

Alt attributes are the text alternatives to your image which will appear if your image fails to load, or if the user is accessing your site with an assistive device such as a screenreader. Because web crawlers don’t have eyes, they’re also what search engines “see” instead of an image, making them important for both accessibility and SEO.

As such, the alt text and title text tag fields are the best place to put any keywords relevant to your image, BUT: do not keyword-stuff! This is a poor practice in image SEO just as in text-based SEO, and will do the screenreader users accessing your website no favors.

Title text

The title text is effectively the name of your image, and as such serves a very similar purpose to your image filename. The main difference is that it needs to be human readable as well as machine readable – so use spaces to separate the words in your image, not underscores or dashes (or nothing at all).

There are certain circumstances in which title text is all you need to substitute for your image – if the title text alone describes the image, you don’t always need alt text.

For example, if the image is a headshot of a person, their name alone is sufficient for title text – as it tells both people and search engines what the image is of – and no additional details are necessary in the alt text. Alt attributes are important, but you don’t need to go overboard!

Alt text

This is the field that describes what your image depicts. Alt text can help search engines work out not just the content of an image but the topic of the surrounding text – so it’s important to get it right.

If possible, at least one image on your page should contain your focus keyword, but it’s important not to shoehorn it in. Image alt text should be clear, descriptive, and written in natural language. Imagine it as if you were telling someone who couldn’t see the image what it was about. Which key details would you highlight?

Some guides will place a recommended length on alt text, such as 80 or 150 characters, but in truth the alt text should be as long as it needs to be in order to get the image content across. Try to be succinct, but don’t sacrifice necessary details for the sake of length.

Here is an example of an article graphic (courtesy of Shutterstock) that we uploaded for a recent article, ‘Beyond Google Analytics: 10 SEO analytics and reporting tools‘. The WordPress backend clearly indicates where to input title and alt text:

The alt text we input for this image is as follows: Image of a person typing on a laptop with paper and pens by the side, and a variety of different analytics icons sketched above it, such as graphs, charts and a clipboard.

Page URL and domain authority

The URL of the page that the images are hosted on can affect the image search traffic. If an image is hosted on an optimized page URL on a page which contains quality and relevant content, your chances of image SEO success will be much higher.

Along with the page URL, the page’s domain authority that also can affect an image’s performance in Google Image Search. If a domain already has a reputation for offering quality and relevant content, your image will do better in search. Image SEO is no different to text-based SEO in this regard.

Surrounding content around images

Image optimization doesn’t happen in a vacuum. As such, the copy that surrounds an image on your page is also important for SEO. The relevance of the content, its quality, and the keywords that are used can all affect how the image ranks in search.

The most important copy is the text that immediately surrounds the image. This might be an introductory sentence which precedes the image (for example, “Below is a graph showing the results of a survey carried out among 500 marketers…”) and/or a caption below it which gives some additional context.

Search engines like Google will use this copy to determine how well the image matches the topic of the page. For example, if the focus of the content is on plumbing, an image of a tree has decreased chances of ranking high for the keyword “plumbing examples” (and is likely to confuse your users to boot).

In addition to this, Google’s image recognition AI has become much more sophisticated in recent years, to the point where it can often identify whether the image subject matches up with the rest of your content.

Stock photography

There has been a long discussion over the years on whether using stock photography has a negative effect on your ranking. Google’s Matt Cutts went on the record back in 2013 to state that stock photos do not harm your search rankings, and therefore there is no difference in using them instead of original photos, SEO-wise.

However, there are a couple of caveats to this. One is that stock images are by their nature generic, and so the visual experience of your website will be a lot more generic as a result, particularly if you use a lot of them. This will also not help your image stand out in search results, and a stock image is unlikely to grab the user’s attention – unless of course you’re a stock photography vendor.

The second thing to bear in mind is that there will be countless other copies of the same image as yours out there on other people’s websites. As Dave Davies pointed out in the 2013 version of this guide, “Google doesn’t want to rank multiple copies of the same image any more than they want to rank multiple copies of the same content. If you’re using the same image that’s been found on a hundred other sites before you, why should yours rank?”

For example, if you’re writing about your company’s business culture, you can either pick a stock photo of happy people in an office environment, or simply upload a high-quality photo of your own office with your team members during a meeting. The latter is personal, relevant and interesting, and gives users a sense of what your company is really like.

Content quality is also important in images as it is in text. Matt Cutts pondered in 2013 whether original images might be used as a future quality signal to indicate a trustworthy website, leading to a higher search ranking:

“Who knows – maybe original image sites might be higher quality, whereas a site that just repeats the same stock photos over and over again might not be nearly as high quality.”

While we don’t have concrete confirmation as to whether Google went on to use this as a quality signal in image search, the impression on the user is worth taking into account.

Image engagement and popularity

Search engines value content with high engagement. This means that if you have a high-quality, relevant and original image that starts becoming popular among users, you have more chances of seeing it higher on search results. As with any text post, the popularity of your content can help it reach higher on the SERPs.

The principles of link-building also apply to image search: the more people link to your image, the higher the chances of increased search traffic coming from it. This can also be facilitated by the use of sharing buttons alongside your images. Once your image gets shared on many sites, its popularity will contribute to its success in search.

The popularity of an image can derive from clicks to your site, embeds and shares on other pages, or even social shares. All of them make the image more popular, while also indicating its relevance to the topic it describes. This ultimately makes search engines pay more attention to it.

Overview

In summary, here’s how you can optimize your images to rank higher in search results:

Try to reduce the weight of your images, but not to the detriment of quality

Pick a relevant filename

Use alt attributes to describe your content as accurately as possible

Pay attention to the content that’s surrounding your images

Try to use original graphics or photography

Aim for engaging images that will encourage sharing

Image optimization 101: How to rank higher in image search syndicated from http://ift.tt/2maPRjm

[severetigermiracle]

How Digital Teacher is Shaping Smart Classrooms Across India

https://www.digitalteacher.in/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/The-Roots-of-Education-Are-Better-But-the-Fruit-is-Sweet.png

India’s education system is going online, and at the forefront of this drive is Digital Teacher — a homegrown product that is transforming classrooms into smart, interactive spaces that learn to reach out to all types of students.

What is Digital Teacher?

Digital Teacher is an e-learning solution featuring a syllabus-based, interactive instrument exclusively for Indian schools. Thus becomes a useful tool to cater to heterogenous classrooms in the country.

Whether a student is placed in a metro or village location, Digital Teacher makes sure that they learn high-quality study material taught in the form of animations, videos, and interactive elements that make complex ideas understandable.

https://www.digitalteacher.in/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Teaching-children-is-an-accomplishment-getting-children-excited-about-learning-is-an-achievement.png

Making Smart Classrooms a Reality Everywhere

While digital learning is growing in urban areas, rural and semi-urban schools often struggle to keep up due to infrastructure and resource gaps. This is where Digital Teacher truly shines. It’s not just a fancy classroom add-on — it’s designed to be simple, cost-effective, and usable offline.

Schools don’t have to concern themselves with high-speed internet or fancy gear. Installed, the system functions beautifully, bringing digital learning to areas where it once was deemed off-limits.

What Makes It Unique?

Because it was created based on genuine Indian student’ and educator’ needs, Digital Teacher differs from the other packages. Its chief main reason behind its functioning lies in following:

Animated 2D/3D Videos: These make learning more visual and engaging, helping students understand better.

Interactive Content: Quizzes and activities are included in lessons to maintain students’ interest.

Friendly Interface: It is easily adoptable for teachers to use in their daily lessons without any specialized training.

Offline Access: Works without an internet connection — a giant benefit for isolated schools.

Language Options: Supports regional languages, ensuring no child is left behind  language barriers.

https://www.digitalteacher.in/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Internet-is-not-required-to-use-the-software.png

Impact on Teaching and Learning

Classrooms are becoming more student-centered and participatory thanks to digital teachers. It allows teachers to spend more time interacting with students and providing explanations rather than sketching out diagrams or taking lengthy notes. Students learn more from visual explanations and good lessons that are consistent, which tends to generate higher retention and performance.

It also accommodates varying learning styles — particularly visual and auditory learners who tend to fall behind in textbook-oriented settings.

Rising Adoption Throughout India

Digital Teacher is already applied in thousands of schools across India. It has been a trusted friend of a private school and a government school towards digital education. Its easy deployment and low maintenance make it scalable even for large school networks.

https://www.digitalteacher.in/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/some-thing-you-can-learn.png

Looking Ahead with Smart Classrooms

India is currently implementing the Digital Education Policy (DEP) 2020 and classroom digitization, and tools such as Digital Teacher are in greater demand than ever before. The site continues to grow with features and content update to remain abreast with changing trends.

Web learning isn’t about putting a screen in place of a blackboard. It is all about reframing the complete process of learning — to become inclusive, interesting, and future-oriented. Indian schools, who are adopting smart classrooms, are finding Digital Teacher an apt complement to this move.

We’re developing content about AI in Digital Teacher to take smart classrooms even further — keep connected with Digital Teacher and be part of the future.

[alanajacksontx]

Image optimization 101: How to rank higher in image search

SEO is not only about optimizing written content.

The increasing dominance of visual content online has brought with it new opportunities for increasing a site’s search traffic by optimizing videos and images.

Optimizing your images gives your website an additional chance to be found via image search, and a good logo or some eye-catching graphics can be just as effective at attracting visitors to your website as your written content.

But even if you’re highly familiar with optimizing written content for search, you may not know where to begin with optimizing images. What factors do you need to bear in mind? Does keyword usage still apply?

In this guide, we’ll take you through everything you need to know about optimizing for image search.

N.B.: This is an updated version of a guide by Dave Davies that we originally published in 2013: Image Optimization: How to Rank on Image Search

Image size

The size of your images can have a big impact on your overall site speed (which is an important search ranking factor), and big, heavy images are one of the biggest culprits for slowing down websites – particularly on mobile.

However, because you also want your images to look good and be eye-catching, especially if they’re the first part of your website that people see in image search, you also don’t want to sacrifice quality. Thus, finding a balance is necessary.

Matt Owen’s article on how to optimize your page images to increase site speed gives some useful pointers here, particularly with regard to not uploading images which are larger than the user will ever see, as this will just slow down your site with no benefit to you or the user.

Which file types are going to be most helpful here? GIF, JPEG and PNG are the three main image file types, which make up 96% of the Internet’s image traffic.

PNG offers a good combination of compression ratio and image quality, and as such is usually your best bet. JPEG can have a compression rate of up to 10x more than the other two formats, but is a lossy format – meaning that it reduces the quality of your images as it compresses them, so consider whether this is a sacrifice you need to make.

Saving your image as a GIF won’t result in a loss of image quality, but it can sometimes reduce color detail, making GIFs most suited to animated images, logos and any other small, simple images.

Google’s PageSpeed Insights offer some more guidelines on how to optimize your images for maximum site speed. 

Image name

The name of your image file can help search engines discover your content in context. This is where keywords enter the picture (as well as in the alt attributes, which we’ll cover below).

If you’re uploading a photo of nature photography, a relevant filename like nature_photography.png has a better chance of ranking well in search than than DSC_1977.png. If it’s possible to be even more specific, such as Hong-Kong-botanical-gardens.png, then that’s even better for SEO.

If you don’t enter a separate title for your image upon upload, the filename will also serve as the image title, which makes it all the more important to be clear and accurate with your filename.

For more on how to optimize your image title text and alt text, read on to the next section.

Alt attributes

Alt attributes are the text alternatives to your image which will appear if your image fails to load, or if the user is accessing your site with an assistive device such as a screenreader. Because web crawlers don’t have eyes, they’re also what search engines “see” instead of an image, making them important for both accessibility and SEO.

As such, the alt text and title text tag fields are the best place to put any keywords relevant to your image, BUT: do not keyword-stuff! This is a poor practice in image SEO just as in text-based SEO, and will do the screenreader users accessing your website no favors.

Title text

The title text is effectively the name of your image, and as such serves a very similar purpose to your image filename. The main difference is that it needs to be human readable as well as machine readable – so use spaces to separate the words in your image, not underscores or dashes (or nothing at all).

There are certain circumstances in which title text is all you need to substitute for your image – if the title text alone describes the image, you don’t always need alt text.

For example, if the image is a headshot of a person, their name alone is sufficient for title text – as it tells both people and search engines what the image is of – and no additional details are necessary in the alt text. Alt attributes are important, but you don’t need to go overboard!

Alt text

This is the field that describes what your image depicts. Alt text can help search engines work out not just the content of an image but the topic of the surrounding text – so it’s important to get it right.

If possible, at least one image on your page should contain your focus keyword, but it’s important not to shoehorn it in. Image alt text should be clear, descriptive, and written in natural language. Imagine it as if you were telling someone who couldn’t see the image what it was about. Which key details would you highlight?

Some guides will place a recommended length on alt text, such as 80 or 150 characters, but in truth the alt text should be as long as it needs to be in order to get the image content across. Try to be succinct, but don’t sacrifice necessary details for the sake of length.

Here is an example of an article graphic (courtesy of Shutterstock) that we uploaded for a recent article, ‘Beyond Google Analytics: 10 SEO analytics and reporting tools‘. The WordPress backend clearly indicates where to input title and alt text:

The alt text we input for this image is as follows: Image of a person typing on a laptop with paper and pens by the side, and a variety of different analytics icons sketched above it, such as graphs, charts and a clipboard.

Page URL and domain authority

The URL of the page that the images are hosted on can affect the image search traffic. If an image is hosted on an optimized page URL on a page which contains quality and relevant content, your chances of image SEO success will be much higher.

Along with the page URL, the page’s domain authority that also can affect an image’s performance in Google Image Search. If a domain already has a reputation for offering quality and relevant content, your image will do better in search. Image SEO is no different to text-based SEO in this regard.

Surrounding content around images

Image optimization doesn’t happen in a vacuum. As such, the copy that surrounds an image on your page is also important for SEO. The relevance of the content, its quality, and the keywords that are used can all affect how the image ranks in search.

The most important copy is the text that immediately surrounds the image. This might be an introductory sentence which precedes the image (for example, “Below is a graph showing the results of a survey carried out among 500 marketers…”) and/or a caption below it which gives some additional context.

Search engines like Google will use this copy to determine how well the image matches the topic of the page. For example, if the focus of the content is on plumbing, an image of a tree has decreased chances of ranking high for the keyword “plumbing examples” (and is likely to confuse your users to boot).

In addition to this, Google’s image recognition AI has become much more sophisticated in recent years, to the point where it can often identify whether the image subject matches up with the rest of your content.

Stock photography

There has been a long discussion over the years on whether using stock photography has a negative effect on your ranking. Google’s Matt Cutts went on the record back in 2013 to state that stock photos do not harm your search rankings, and therefore there is no difference in using them instead of original photos, SEO-wise.

However, there are a couple of caveats to this. One is that stock images are by their nature generic, and so the visual experience of your website will be a lot more generic as a result, particularly if you use a lot of them. This will also not help your image stand out in search results, and a stock image is unlikely to grab the user’s attention – unless of course you’re a stock photography vendor.

The second thing to bear in mind is that there will be countless other copies of the same image as yours out there on other people’s websites. As Dave Davies pointed out in the 2013 version of this guide, “Google doesn’t want to rank multiple copies of the same image any more than they want to rank multiple copies of the same content. If you’re using the same image that’s been found on a hundred other sites before you, why should yours rank?”

For example, if you’re writing about your company’s business culture, you can either pick a stock photo of happy people in an office environment, or simply upload a high-quality photo of your own office with your team members during a meeting. The latter is personal, relevant and interesting, and gives users a sense of what your company is really like.

Content quality is also important in images as it is in text. Matt Cutts pondered in 2013 whether original images might be used as a future quality signal to indicate a trustworthy website, leading to a higher search ranking:

“Who knows – maybe original image sites might be higher quality, whereas a site that just repeats the same stock photos over and over again might not be nearly as high quality.”

While we don’t have concrete confirmation as to whether Google went on to use this as a quality signal in image search, the impression on the user is worth taking into account.

Image engagement and popularity

Search engines value content with high engagement. This means that if you have a high-quality, relevant and original image that starts becoming popular among users, you have more chances of seeing it higher on search results. As with any text post, the popularity of your content can help it reach higher on the SERPs.

The principles of link-building also apply to image search: the more people link to your image, the higher the chances of increased search traffic coming from it. This can also be facilitated by the use of sharing buttons alongside your images. Once your image gets shared on many sites, its popularity will contribute to its success in search.

The popularity of an image can derive from clicks to your site, embeds and shares on other pages, or even social shares. All of them make the image more popular, while also indicating its relevance to the topic it describes. This ultimately makes search engines pay more attention to it.

Overview

In summary, here’s how you can optimize your images to rank higher in search results:

Try to reduce the weight of your images, but not to the detriment of quality

Pick a relevant filename

Use alt attributes to describe your content as accurately as possible

Pay attention to the content that’s surrounding your images

Try to use original graphics or photography

Aim for engaging images that will encourage sharing

from IM Tips And Tricks https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/11/09/image-optimization-101-how-to-rank-higher-in-image-search/ from Rising Phoenix SEO https://risingphxseo.tumblr.com/post/167304434185

[kellykperez]

Image optimization 101: How to rank higher in image search

SEO is not only about optimizing written content.

The increasing dominance of visual content online has brought with it new opportunities for increasing a site’s search traffic by optimizing videos and images.

Optimizing your images gives your website an additional chance to be found via image search, and a good logo or some eye-catching graphics can be just as effective at attracting visitors to your website as your written content.

But even if you’re highly familiar with optimizing written content for search, you may not know where to begin with optimizing images. What factors do you need to bear in mind? Does keyword usage still apply?

In this guide, we’ll take you through everything you need to know about optimizing for image search.

N.B.: This is an updated version of a guide by Dave Davies that we originally published in 2013: Image Optimization: How to Rank on Image Search

Image size

The size of your images can have a big impact on your overall site speed (which is an important search ranking factor), and big, heavy images are one of the biggest culprits for slowing down websites – particularly on mobile.

However, because you also want your images to look good and be eye-catching, especially if they’re the first part of your website that people see in image search, you also don’t want to sacrifice quality. Thus, finding a balance is necessary.

Matt Owen’s article on how to optimize your page images to increase site speed gives some useful pointers here, particularly with regard to not uploading images which are larger than the user will ever see, as this will just slow down your site with no benefit to you or the user.

Which file types are going to be most helpful here? GIF, JPEG and PNG are the three main image file types, which make up 96% of the Internet’s image traffic.

PNG offers a good combination of compression ratio and image quality, and as such is usually your best bet. JPEG can have a compression rate of up to 10x more than the other two formats, but is a lossy format – meaning that it reduces the quality of your images as it compresses them, so consider whether this is a sacrifice you need to make.

Saving your image as a GIF won’t result in a loss of image quality, but it can sometimes reduce color detail, making GIFs most suited to animated images, logos and any other small, simple images.

Google’s PageSpeed Insights offer some more guidelines on how to optimize your images for maximum site speed. 

Image name

The name of your image file can help search engines discover your content in context. This is where keywords enter the picture (as well as in the alt attributes, which we’ll cover below).

If you’re uploading a photo of nature photography, a relevant filename like nature_photography.png has a better chance of ranking well in search than than DSC_1977.png. If it’s possible to be even more specific, such as Hong-Kong-botanical-gardens.png, then that’s even better for SEO.

If you don’t enter a separate title for your image upon upload, the filename will also serve as the image title, which makes it all the more important to be clear and accurate with your filename.

For more on how to optimize your image title text and alt text, read on to the next section.

Alt attributes

Alt attributes are the text alternatives to your image which will appear if your image fails to load, or if the user is accessing your site with an assistive device such as a screenreader. Because web crawlers don’t have eyes, they’re also what search engines “see” instead of an image, making them important for both accessibility and SEO.

As such, the alt text and title text tag fields are the best place to put any keywords relevant to your image, BUT: do not keyword-stuff! This is a poor practice in image SEO just as in text-based SEO, and will do the screenreader users accessing your website no favors.

Title text

The title text is effectively the name of your image, and as such serves a very similar purpose to your image filename. The main difference is that it needs to be human readable as well as machine readable – so use spaces to separate the words in your image, not underscores or dashes (or nothing at all).

There are certain circumstances in which title text is all you need to substitute for your image – if the title text alone describes the image, you don’t always need alt text.

For example, if the image is a headshot of a person, their name alone is sufficient for title text – as it tells both people and search engines what the image is of – and no additional details are necessary in the alt text. Alt attributes are important, but you don’t need to go overboard!

Alt text

This is the field that describes what your image depicts. Alt text can help search engines work out not just the content of an image but the topic of the surrounding text – so it’s important to get it right.

If possible, at least one image on your page should contain your focus keyword, but it’s important not to shoehorn it in. Image alt text should be clear, descriptive, and written in natural language. Imagine it as if you were telling someone who couldn’t see the image what it was about. Which key details would you highlight?

Some guides will place a recommended length on alt text, such as 80 or 150 characters, but in truth the alt text should be as long as it needs to be in order to get the image content across. Try to be succinct, but don’t sacrifice necessary details for the sake of length.

Here is an example of an article graphic (courtesy of Shutterstock) that we uploaded for a recent article, ‘Beyond Google Analytics: 10 SEO analytics and reporting tools‘. The WordPress backend clearly indicates where to input title and alt text:

The alt text we input for this image is as follows: Image of a person typing on a laptop with paper and pens by the side, and a variety of different analytics icons sketched above it, such as graphs, charts and a clipboard.

Page URL and domain authority

The URL of the page that the images are hosted on can affect the image search traffic. If an image is hosted on an optimized page URL on a page which contains quality and relevant content, your chances of image SEO success will be much higher.

Along with the page URL, the page’s domain authority that also can affect an image’s performance in Google Image Search. If a domain already has a reputation for offering quality and relevant content, your image will do better in search. Image SEO is no different to text-based SEO in this regard.

Surrounding content around images

Image optimization doesn’t happen in a vacuum. As such, the copy that surrounds an image on your page is also important for SEO. The relevance of the content, its quality, and the keywords that are used can all affect how the image ranks in search.

The most important copy is the text that immediately surrounds the image. This might be an introductory sentence which precedes the image (for example, “Below is a graph showing the results of a survey carried out among 500 marketers…”) and/or a caption below it which gives some additional context.

Search engines like Google will use this copy to determine how well the image matches the topic of the page. For example, if the focus of the content is on plumbing, an image of a tree has decreased chances of ranking high for the keyword “plumbing examples” (and is likely to confuse your users to boot).

In addition to this, Google’s image recognition AI has become much more sophisticated in recent years, to the point where it can often identify whether the image subject matches up with the rest of your content.

Stock photography

There has been a long discussion over the years on whether using stock photography has a negative effect on your ranking. Google’s Matt Cutts went on the record back in 2013 to state that stock photos do not harm your search rankings, and therefore there is no difference in using them instead of original photos, SEO-wise.

However, there are a couple of caveats to this. One is that stock images are by their nature generic, and so the visual experience of your website will be a lot more generic as a result, particularly if you use a lot of them. This will also not help your image stand out in search results, and a stock image is unlikely to grab the user’s attention – unless of course you’re a stock photography vendor.

The second thing to bear in mind is that there will be countless other copies of the same image as yours out there on other people’s websites. As Dave Davies pointed out in the 2013 version of this guide, “Google doesn’t want to rank multiple copies of the same image any more than they want to rank multiple copies of the same content. If you’re using the same image that’s been found on a hundred other sites before you, why should yours rank?”

For example, if you’re writing about your company’s business culture, you can either pick a stock photo of happy people in an office environment, or simply upload a high-quality photo of your own office with your team members during a meeting. The latter is personal, relevant and interesting, and gives users a sense of what your company is really like.

Content quality is also important in images as it is in text. Matt Cutts pondered in 2013 whether original images might be used as a future quality signal to indicate a trustworthy website, leading to a higher search ranking:

“Who knows – maybe original image sites might be higher quality, whereas a site that just repeats the same stock photos over and over again might not be nearly as high quality.”

While we don’t have concrete confirmation as to whether Google went on to use this as a quality signal in image search, the impression on the user is worth taking into account.

Image engagement and popularity

Search engines value content with high engagement. This means that if you have a high-quality, relevant and original image that starts becoming popular among users, you have more chances of seeing it higher on search results. As with any text post, the popularity of your content can help it reach higher on the SERPs.

The principles of link-building also apply to image search: the more people link to your image, the higher the chances of increased search traffic coming from it. This can also be facilitated by the use of sharing buttons alongside your images. Once your image gets shared on many sites, its popularity will contribute to its success in search.

The popularity of an image can derive from clicks to your site, embeds and shares on other pages, or even social shares. All of them make the image more popular, while also indicating its relevance to the topic it describes. This ultimately makes search engines pay more attention to it.

Overview

In summary, here’s how you can optimize your images to rank higher in search results:

Try to reduce the weight of your images, but not to the detriment of quality

Pick a relevant filename

Use alt attributes to describe your content as accurately as possible

Pay attention to the content that’s surrounding your images

Try to use original graphics or photography

Aim for engaging images that will encourage sharing

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/11/09/image-optimization-101-how-to-rank-higher-in-image-search/ from Rising Phoenix SEO http://risingphoenixseo.blogspot.com/2017/11/image-optimization-101-how-to-rank.html

[sheilalmartinia]

Image optimization 101: How to rank higher in image search

SEO is not only about optimizing written content.

The increasing dominance of visual content online has brought with it new opportunities for increasing a site’s search traffic by optimizing videos and images.

Optimizing your images gives your website an additional chance to be found via image search, and a good logo or some eye-catching graphics can be just as effective at attracting visitors to your website as your written content.

But even if you’re highly familiar with optimizing written content for search, you may not know where to begin with optimizing images. What factors do you need to bear in mind? Does keyword usage still apply?

In this guide, we’ll take you through everything you need to know about optimizing for image search.

N.B.: This is an updated version of a guide by Dave Davies that we originally published in 2013: Image Optimization: How to Rank on Image Search

Image size

The size of your images can have a big impact on your overall site speed (which is an important search ranking factor), and big, heavy images are one of the biggest culprits for slowing down websites – particularly on mobile.

However, because you also want your images to look good and be eye-catching, especially if they’re the first part of your website that people see in image search, you also don’t want to sacrifice quality. Thus, finding a balance is necessary.

Matt Owen’s article on how to optimize your page images to increase site speed gives some useful pointers here, particularly with regard to not uploading images which are larger than the user will ever see, as this will just slow down your site with no benefit to you or the user.

Which file types are going to be most helpful here? GIF, JPEG and PNG are the three main image file types, which make up 96% of the Internet’s image traffic.

PNG offers a good combination of compression ratio and image quality, and as such is usually your best bet. JPEG can have a compression rate of up to 10x more than the other two formats, but is a lossy format – meaning that it reduces the quality of your images as it compresses them, so consider whether this is a sacrifice you need to make.

Saving your image as a GIF won’t result in a loss of image quality, but it can sometimes reduce color detail, making GIFs most suited to animated images, logos and any other small, simple images.

Google’s PageSpeed Insights offer some more guidelines on how to optimize your images for maximum site speed. 

Image name

The name of your image file can help search engines discover your content in context. This is where keywords enter the picture (as well as in the alt attributes, which we’ll cover below).

If you’re uploading a photo of nature photography, a relevant filename like nature_photography.png has a better chance of ranking well in search than than DSC_1977.png. If it’s possible to be even more specific, such as Hong-Kong-botanical-gardens.png, then that’s even better for SEO.

If you don’t enter a separate title for your image upon upload, the filename will also serve as the image title, which makes it all the more important to be clear and accurate with your filename.

For more on how to optimize your image title text and alt text, read on to the next section.

Alt attributes

Alt attributes are the text alternatives to your image which will appear if your image fails to load, or if the user is accessing your site with an assistive device such as a screenreader. Because web crawlers don’t have eyes, they’re also what search engines “see” instead of an image, making them important for both accessibility and SEO.

As such, the alt text and title text tag fields are the best place to put any keywords relevant to your image, BUT: do not keyword-stuff! This is a poor practice in image SEO just as in text-based SEO, and will do the screenreader users accessing your website no favors.

Title text

The title text is effectively the name of your image, and as such serves a very similar purpose to your image filename. The main difference is that it needs to be human readable as well as machine readable – so use spaces to separate the words in your image, not underscores or dashes (or nothing at all).

There are certain circumstances in which title text is all you need to substitute for your image – if the title text alone describes the image, you don’t always need alt text.

For example, if the image is a headshot of a person, their name alone is sufficient for title text – as it tells both people and search engines what the image is of – and no additional details are necessary in the alt text. Alt attributes are important, but you don’t need to go overboard!

Alt text

This is the field that describes what your image depicts. Alt text can help search engines work out not just the content of an image but the topic of the surrounding text – so it’s important to get it right.

If possible, at least one image on your page should contain your focus keyword, but it’s important not to shoehorn it in. Image alt text should be clear, descriptive, and written in natural language. Imagine it as if you were telling someone who couldn’t see the image what it was about. Which key details would you highlight?

Some guides will place a recommended length on alt text, such as 80 or 150 characters, but in truth the alt text should be as long as it needs to be in order to get the image content across. Try to be succinct, but don’t sacrifice necessary details for the sake of length.

Here is an example of an article graphic (courtesy of Shutterstock) that we uploaded for a recent article, ‘Beyond Google Analytics: 10 SEO analytics and reporting tools‘. The WordPress backend clearly indicates where to input title and alt text:

The alt text we input for this image is as follows: Image of a person typing on a laptop with paper and pens by the side, and a variety of different analytics icons sketched above it, such as graphs, charts and a clipboard.

Page URL and domain authority

The URL of the page that the images are hosted on can affect the image search traffic. If an image is hosted on an optimized page URL on a page which contains quality and relevant content, your chances of image SEO success will be much higher.

Along with the page URL, the page’s domain authority that also can affect an image’s performance in Google Image Search. If a domain already has a reputation for offering quality and relevant content, your image will do better in search. Image SEO is no different to text-based SEO in this regard.

Surrounding content around images

Image optimization doesn’t happen in a vacuum. As such, the copy that surrounds an image on your page is also important for SEO. The relevance of the content, its quality, and the keywords that are used can all affect how the image ranks in search.

The most important copy is the text that immediately surrounds the image. This might be an introductory sentence which precedes the image (for example, “Below is a graph showing the results of a survey carried out among 500 marketers…”) and/or a caption below it which gives some additional context.

Search engines like Google will use this copy to determine how well the image matches the topic of the page. For example, if the focus of the content is on plumbing, an image of a tree has decreased chances of ranking high for the keyword “plumbing examples” (and is likely to confuse your users to boot).

In addition to this, Google’s image recognition AI has become much more sophisticated in recent years, to the point where it can often identify whether the image subject matches up with the rest of your content.

Stock photography

There has been a long discussion over the years on whether using stock photography has a negative effect on your ranking. Google’s Matt Cutts went on the record back in 2013 to state that stock photos do not harm your search rankings, and therefore there is no difference in using them instead of original photos, SEO-wise.

However, there are a couple of caveats to this. One is that stock images are by their nature generic, and so the visual experience of your website will be a lot more generic as a result, particularly if you use a lot of them. This will also not help your image stand out in search results, and a stock image is unlikely to grab the user’s attention – unless of course you’re a stock photography vendor.

The second thing to bear in mind is that there will be countless other copies of the same image as yours out there on other people’s websites. As Dave Davies pointed out in the 2013 version of this guide, “Google doesn’t want to rank multiple copies of the same image any more than they want to rank multiple copies of the same content. If you’re using the same image that’s been found on a hundred other sites before you, why should yours rank?”

For example, if you’re writing about your company’s business culture, you can either pick a stock photo of happy people in an office environment, or simply upload a high-quality photo of your own office with your team members during a meeting. The latter is personal, relevant and interesting, and gives users a sense of what your company is really like.

Content quality is also important in images as it is in text. Matt Cutts pondered in 2013 whether original images might be used as a future quality signal to indicate a trustworthy website, leading to a higher search ranking:

“Who knows – maybe original image sites might be higher quality, whereas a site that just repeats the same stock photos over and over again might not be nearly as high quality.”

While we don’t have concrete confirmation as to whether Google went on to use this as a quality signal in image search, the impression on the user is worth taking into account.

Image engagement and popularity

Search engines value content with high engagement. This means that if you have a high-quality, relevant and original image that starts becoming popular among users, you have more chances of seeing it higher on search results. As with any text post, the popularity of your content can help it reach higher on the SERPs.

The principles of link-building also apply to image search: the more people link to your image, the higher the chances of increased search traffic coming from it. This can also be facilitated by the use of sharing buttons alongside your images. Once your image gets shared on many sites, its popularity will contribute to its success in search.

The popularity of an image can derive from clicks to your site, embeds and shares on other pages, or even social shares. All of them make the image more popular, while also indicating its relevance to the topic it describes. This ultimately makes search engines pay more attention to it.

Overview

In summary, here’s how you can optimize your images to rank higher in search results:

Try to reduce the weight of your images, but not to the detriment of quality

Pick a relevant filename

Use alt attributes to describe your content as accurately as possible

Pay attention to the content that’s surrounding your images

Try to use original graphics or photography

Aim for engaging images that will encourage sharing

from Search Engine Watch https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/11/09/image-optimization-101-how-to-rank-higher-in-image-search/