097: Are Your Website Images Hurting Your SEO? What to Fix First

In this episode, Jules White shares how to optimise your website images for better search visibility, faster load times, and stronger performance across Google and AI-powered tools like ChatGPT.

After helping a client the recovery process from a major SEO drop following a platform migration, Jules dives into a common question from that session: How do I optimise my images so they help rather than harm my website?

This episode covers everything from file names and alt text to load speed, AI search results, and practical examples of what actually works.

Key Takeaways:

• Image SEO Basics: Learn why correctly naming your image files (using dashes and keywords) and writing clear, relevant alt text matters more than ever.
• Avoid Common Mistakes: Discover why large file sizes, generic filenames, and mismatched imagery can slow your site down and confuse both search engines and visitors.
• AI Search & Image Recognition: Hear how tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity are starting to use image data - and how to get your brand to show up in those results.
• Bite-Sized Action Steps: Start by updating one image on your homepage and one on your top sales page - optimise file name, file size, and alt text.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• 🎧 Episode 010: Website Migration Mistakes That Sabotage Your SEO
• 🎧 Episode 013: SEO Basics – Your Essential Guide to Getting Found On Google
• 🎧 Episode 085: Can AI Find Your Business? I Put ChatGPT, Gemini & Perplexity To The Test
• 🎧 Episode 095: Three Simple Checks to Future-Proof Your Website for Search
• 🧰 Grab the workshop: Become ChatGPT Famous: How To Get Recommended In AI Search
• 📈 Join The Website Growth Club – Bite-sized steps to improve your site every month
• 💬 Book a Power Hour – Identify your best-performing pages and spot image SEO quick wins

Don’t forget to subscribe for more grounded advice on SEO, content strategy, and getting your website to work harder for your business.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Client Stories
• 1:08 The Importance of Website Migration
• 2:51 Optimizing Images for SEO
• 4:23 Common Image Mistakes and Solutions
• 8:42 Technical Tips for Image Optimization
• 20:43 Final Tips and Action Steps
• 25:40 Conclusion and Community Invitation

Transcript

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT - MAY CONTAIN ERRORS

Introduction and Client Stories

Hi, happy Friday. Hope you're well. So, I've had some client power hours this week, which I absolutely love, and we've made some great progress and great discoveries and some real quick wins for people. A question that came up this week during a power hour came from a client who had unfortunately migrated her website.

She had migrated to a different platform and then she had completely lost all of her traffic and all of the sales that were coming from that traffic as well. It always breaks my heart when I hear about these kind of stories because it happens so often. It's a really common problem; people take advice, make a decision, and then lose all their traffic. Then it's often too late when they actually realise, "Oh, where's all my traffic gone?" It is too late to do something about it really.

The Importance of Website Migration

So, I always love it when I catch people just before they're about to migrate, or when they're just starting to think about it, and I can just advise them on some of the things that they can do to help to make sure that they do not lose that traffic. Even just to make sure that they understand whether they are actually getting traffic from Google.

I had this with a client a few weeks ago where she was thinking about moving platforms and when we actually dived in and looked at what was going on with her traffic, we realised that she was getting a lot more traffic from Google than she thought. She was actually getting leads and getting clients coming in through Google. That's something that's not to be sniffed at if you're finding that is happening.

As much as you might think it's not bringing a flurry of clients into your business, if it's bringing people in, then that's definitely something not to, you know, it is not a decision to be taken lightly anyway. If you check out episode 10 of the podcast, which is all about website migration mistakes that sabotage your SEO, go and check out that one. If you're thinking about changing platforms or doing anything major, any major changes with your website, then have a listen to that episode and reach out if you need some help with this and you need some advice, and we can always have a little chat.

Anyway, with this client this week, it was too late. She had already lost all her traffic, but she's now at the point where she's thinking about her new site and how she can actually make the most of it. She had it set up, and it has not been set up particularly well from an SEO point of view.

So, she has been doing some work herself, and now she's ready to really make sure that it is actually optimised and that it is showing up on Google. One of the questions that she asked was about image SEO and what are the best practices that she needs to have to actually help to make sure that her images are optimised to show up in search and make the most of them really? It is a business that images could be a big part of actually bringing people through to her business.

Optimising Images for SEO

So, that's what today's episode is all about: how we can actually make the most of the images on our website, making sure that we are optimising them so that our images themselves can actually show up in searches as well as them supporting the rest of our website. Hopefully, this episode will help you to think about your images and how you can make the most of your images through your website.

This is something that is often overlooked, and often images can be a real problem point for websites. There are common mistakes that people make that can, A, not make the most of the possibility with images, but also, B, it can actually harm your website if your images are not set up properly. If they are slow to load, if they are not really giving the user experience that they should be, then that can all affect your traffic and your sales as well really.

But it is not just all about techie stuff. This is not just like a techie thing; this is something that is very simple to do. You can actually do a lot of this stuff yourself. If you are uploading your images to your website yourself, if you are building your website yourself, or if you are having someone build it for you, just making sure that these best practices are used as you go, then that can make a massive difference really.

Episode 13 of the podcast is 'SEO Basics, Your Essential Guide to Getting Found'. If you have not listened to that, it's a fundamental episode to listen to, just helping you to understand some of the basics of SEO, how it works, and how to set your site up for fundamental success.

Common Image Mistakes and Solutions

So, the problems with images that are not set up right: if you are taking images on your phone or getting images from a photoshoot that you have had with a professional photographer, then you might find that these file sizes are massive. I quite often see this on websites where they have been uploaded, and ideally, we do not really want any images on our website, any individual images, to be more than 100 kilobytes in file size if we can. Often they are; often they are a megabyte plus, and a megabyte is 1,000 kilobytes, so you can see how much that would actually slow your website down. We want our website images to look good, to look crisp, professional.

But they do not need to be print quality for that to happen on websites and especially as the majority of people are looking on their phone as well. We definitely want them to look good wherever people are looking at our website, but actually, we do not need to have these big file sizes. Quite often, people will not think about image file names as they are uploading their images to their website. I am going to come on and talk a little bit more about that in a minute, but that's another common problem. So, it might just be called image 1, 2, 3, 4, or, yeah, it's normally that kind of one that's in there really.

Leaving the alt text blank is another thing that people will do, which is a real low-hanging fruit. Actually making sure that your images are relevant to the content that you are having on your page or the content that you are trying to enhance by using images really as well.

So, search engines like Google, and ChatGPT, and any AI models, are all much more able to sort of see images and understand images. Years ago, Google could only understand what an image was about based on the alt text, and even now, Google is much better at actually understanding images. So, it can look at an image and it can tell you what that image is about, which is great. But if you can help with doing things like your file names and your alt text using descriptive language there that actually matches the images, that can make a massive difference.

Also, when looking at images and looking at the content on a page, making sure that the words on the page actually correspond with the images is also really helpful. So, that helps to make sure that it is all supporting each other; the images are supporting the copy, and the copy is supporting the images as well. That is often something that is not thought about a lot really, where people do not necessarily think about, "Is this image the best one to use for this section?"

"Is this image something that is actually appropriate for this part of the website?" That is often a common mistake that I see and something that you can quite easily fix yourself as well. This is all part of actually thinking about your website structure and thinking about what you actually want each page to show up for on Google.

I always do this with my clients. We will always start by thinking about mapping the website pages, thinking about what you want to show up for, like what search terms you want to show up for, which page is the most appropriate for that on your website, and then making sure we are optimising that. Part of that optimisation is making sure the images are actually optimised.

I did a little test on tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, back in episode 85, which was called 'Can AI Find Your Business? I Put ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity To The Test', and some of the results that came up around images were really interesting actually. I was looking at local dog walkers, and I found that a lot of what was coming up in the AI overviews and in that search within Perplexity and within ChatGPT, a lot of what was being shown there was actually images.

They were images that had either, like the ones that were coming up were ones that had a van with the name of the business in there, and especially if it mentioned dog walkers. Then the ones that had good descriptive alt text, so they were mentioning dog walkers within that alt text. It just shows that actually making sure the images are relevant and making sure that you are using that alt text can all help both Google and ChatGPT wherever people are searching can help your images be the ones that actually show up, which then will hopefully lead people to come through to your website and actually click on and learn more about your business basically.

Technical Tips for Image Optimisation

So, one of the first things to think about when you are actually thinking about images to upload to your website is to make those image file names. That was the question that came up from this client. She sent me a list of like image file names and "what are the best ones?", "Which ones do you think would stand out?" It all depends on what your, what that image's job is, what page it's for, and what you are trying to actually get that page to show up for in search.

The best practice in terms of when you are thinking about file names is to try and name the file, and the same with the alt text as well. Try and name something that is actually relevant to the image, obviously, and if you can get keywords or key phrases in there, then it is good to do that if you can. So, with image file names, try and use dashes between the words if you can.

For example, if it was "relaxing organic lavender facial", that would then be "relaxing-organic-lavender-facial.jpg" or "png", whichever. If you are using it that way, it just makes it easier for Google and for people as well to read it. It just makes more sense than using like the underscore; it is so much easier for people to naturally read that.

Now, some website platforms do actually override your image file name. FEA create does this unfortunately. A lot of website builders will actually rename your files in terms of just a load of numbers and gobbledegook basically. Kajabi does this as well, but Kajabi keeps the image file name on the end of that gobbledegook. Even that would be better than nothing realistically.

It all helps Google and ChatGPT and AI bots to understand what's going on with your website. So, yeah, that's what I would do with the image file names. You do not need to use stop words, like "of", "and", "the", those kind of things. Just making sure that you are getting those main points across in the image file names and using dashes between the words, if you can.

Image alt text: this should describe the image in clear and simple language. Alt text is something you will see a little box in your website builder that says, "alt text", "alternative text", "accessibility text", "SEO text", or something like that; normally it just says "alt text". That originally they were designed for screen readers. So, if people were using screen readers for accessibility, also for back in the day, and I say back in the day, some people still do not have good internet connection, and sometimes when you are out and about you do not have a signal.

So, when websites were a lot slower as well, when the internet was slower, I suppose, people would see the alt text before the image itself actually loaded, and that still can happen now. So, if somebody was seeing this page and they were not seeing the image, what would you want them to be seeing there instead? Just thinking about if someone could not see the image, how would you describe it in a sentence?

I was thinking of the example of if somebody was sitting at a spa having a pedicure. I would not put "women in white robe with feet in a bowl of water". I would be thinking more of "women relaxing during pedicure at luxury spa, and then the spa name in location" or something like that. So, you are being a lot more descriptive and using those keywords that can help you actually then to show up in search with that particular image there.

The alt text as well, you do not need to do this for all of your images. I would definitely say to do it for any new images that you upload to your website. Ideally, you want at least one image alt text to contain your target keywords or key phrase for the particular page that you are trying to get that page ranking for. So, at least one image alt text. If you are in there and you are doing work to your images and you can just quickly create an alt text, then do it.

You can even put your image into ChatGPT and ask it to create image alt text. You can tell it what the target keyword is for that page. Bear in mind though, that if it is a facials page and you are trying to get ranked for "luxury lavender facial", for example, and you have got a picture of somebody having their feet massaged on that page, then you would not be able to use "luxury lavender facial", unless it was like "foot massage included in luxury lavender facial" or something like that. So, it needs the alt text needs to actually be relevant to the image, and the image needs to be relevant for the copy as well, for what you are actually trying to describe.

Otherwise, it is a real mismatch. I always sort of say, if you were trying to sell a back massage and you have got a picture of a facial next to it, then that is an immediate disconnect for the person who is actually looking at that webpage. I have said about image file sizes. Ideally, keep it under 100 kilobytes per image. If you are using an image editor, like Affinity Photo, with Macs, I think you can export your images with different file sizes.

You can compress them if you are using Adobe or something like that, it gives you the image export options. You can usually choose in there what quality you want the image to be. You can also do this in Canva as well. If you are downloading single images from Canva, you can limit the file size.

So, I normally do that and set it to like 98 kilobytes. It does depend on the image, and this is where getting that balance right between actually not compressing it so much that it loses quality. It would be better to have an image that was 150 kilobytes, but if the image quality is significantly better, then that would be a better option in my eyes really. It does depend on the kind of image as well. So, if it is a graphic or something like that, then you probably do not even have to worry about that 'cause they are going to have a lot less pixels in them. They are going to have a lot smaller image file size anyway, just naturally.

I also use another tool called Tiny PNG. It is a website that you can visit, and you can upload your images there, and it will then compress them for you. Bear in mind that if you have got an image that is like over 500 kilobytes, you are unlikely to be able to use Tiny PNG just to immediately get it down to under 100 kilobytes.

So, ideally, if it is images that are around, like, I do not know, 200 and 250, 300 kilobytes, you might find that that works with those. Again, it depends on the image, it depends what is there and how much compression is available really to be able to do that, and then you just download that and use that version of the image that you upload to your website.

Then the other thing to, um, or the other tool you can use to check this rather, there are a few things you can do. If you use inspect tools, so if you right-click, I am not sure about on a Mac, but on a PC, if you right-click or hit F12, and you will see in the options there, you will see one that says inspect. Then when you go into that, you can actually look at image file sizes in there.

So, yeah, you can just check in there, and it will show you what image file sizes are actually there within your website. I have a few tools that help me to do this as well. I have a paid one that is called Hoverfy, which is one that I pay for annually. Realistically, you probably do not need this unless you have got a lot of images that you need to sort of think about. It is one of those things that I would always just say, even if you try and do this as best practice moving forward, that is going to make a big difference.

On those most important pages first with this as well. So, making sure the images on your homepage, the images on your pages that are closest to the sale, those pages that we always work on first, the ones that are closest to you actually making a sale. Make sure they load quickly first as much as you can really; an image file size is a big thing with page load speed.

You can actually go to Google's Page Speed Checker, PageSpeed Insights on Google, and that will tell you what on your website is actually slowing it down. One thing to mention is that we want, ideally we want our webpages to load within three seconds. Ideally, we want all of the pages on your website, every single page, to load within three seconds. Because otherwise, if you have got one page that is really image heavy, that has got like 10 megabytes pictures on it, and that page is slowing your website down, then that will affect your rankings.

That will affect whether Google does actually display your website or not. It does not mean to say that it is never going to rank, but if Google has two websites that are pretty much the same on everything else and one loads quickly and one does not, then Google is going to be choosing the one that loads quickly, realistically. It is also a conversion thing as well.

If your website is slow to load, quite often people will just bounce away. They reckon that people have got a three-second attention span. But realistically, if a website takes three seconds to load, most people will assume that there is something wrong with it and they are not going to wait for it to load anyway realistically.

Then also thinking about image size itself as well. So, when you are uploading images to your website, if you have got an image that you are going to use somewhere in a hero banner, so you want it to be full width desktop, which is normally 1200 or 1800 pixels wide. You also want to use that as a little thumbnail somewhere as well. Then you do not want to be using the same image for that if you can.

So, ideally, you would have two versions of that image. So, you would maybe have one that was 400 pixels wide for the thumbnail, maybe even less if it is a tiny thumbnail, and then one that was the full width as well. So, you would use different versions of that image for the different places. That also helps because then it does not mean that Google and whichever browser is displaying your website, is trying to resize that image as it is loading the page as well. So, thinking about that, that is helpful.

Depending on what website builder you are using, you can add images to your sitemap as well. Unfortunately, you can not do this in FEA Create; it is not something that is an option in here, but that can be helpful. What you can do is add your featured images for your blog into your structured data, so your schema markup for your website, which is the technical things that you can put in the backend that helps whatever search engine is actually looking through your website, wherever bot is reading through your website.

It helps it to understand the data in your website and understand the context of it as well as the content of it so you can actually use that. So, making sure that you are linking to your images and your structured data can help as well. You can also, if you are thinking about like getting your brand name into some of your images, I would definitely recommend doing that.

So, making sure that you are adding your brand name, not necessarily into every image, but key images, like if you have got a picture of the front of your shop. Making sure that you put your brand name in there could be helpful. I say not necessarily every time, but actually making sure that you have got that, especially for like maybe your about page, the one that you are really trying to get to, to be well known for your brand name or maybe your homepage could be that as well, so you can use that in your image alt text and the image file names as well.

This helps when AI tools or Google are actually trying to describe your brand. That will help with that as well. You have got Episode 95 of the podcast, which is 'Three Simple Checks to Future Proof Your Website For Search'. So, go and have a listen to that episode as well. These are things that you can just do to make sure your website is ready to move forward and show up in AI search as well.

You can also grab my workshop on Becoming ChatGPT Famous. You can visit my website, https://thewebsitesuccesshub.com/ai is how you can get hold of that.

Final Tips and Action Steps

Some of the common questions that come up around images and especially website images are, "Do I have to SEO optimise every image on my website?" As I have said, start with those most important ones first. Start with at least one image on every of those most important pages. So, definitely homepage, have a few images that are optimised on your homepage, and also the images that then lead to other important pages.

So, if you have got an image on your homepage that leads to your services page, making sure that that image is optimised for the term "services", in relevance to what you do. So like, "beauty services" or "dog walking services", for example. Making sure that you have got that image optimised for that, that sends strong signals to Google about the services page and what that page is all about. So, focusing on those most important pages first, and at least one image on each page, and you just update them gradually.

Then, as I say, with anything new that you are updating, just to add this in as like a standard procedure that you do when you upload an image to your website, add in the alt text and make sure that as you are uploading it, the file name has best practices. Even if you know that your website builder overrides it, which I do with FEA Create, it is still good practice to name your image file names, so that they are SEO optimised really.

It just, I think it gets you into that habit of thinking about your images, thinking about what you are trying to get these images to show up for, and just those best practices really. Then, another question is whether your images are too big, and as I say, you can use inspect tools for that. Or go to Google Page Speed Insights. That will then tell you what images on your page are too big.

What is the difference between image file name and alt text? So, file name is what is stored in your folders. Your website builder can understand that file name and your website builder either rewrites that file name or it will use that file name as part of where that image is stored within your website.

Alt text is that front thing that is not really seen at the very front end, but it is seen as part of your website. It can be seen by people if they are looking for the alt text or if your website is not loading quickly. It also sends those strong signals about the image and about the page to whichever search engine is actually reading through your website, whichever bot is reading through your website.

The last question was, "Is it really worth this effort?" This does sound like a lot of effort. It does not have to be, and it absolutely is, especially for product-based sites, image-heavy businesses, local businesses, even online businesses, really for every business, every website. Making sure that your images are well placed, relevant to the content that you are actually talking about in the copy and optimised can be something that really helps.

It helps you to have that possibility of showing up in search. It also helps to improve the user experience on your website. So, whether it is page speed or just understanding, our brains process images so much faster than they process words. A picture literally does speak a thousand words, and you can very quickly get your message across and help to get people to actually go and read the copy that is there and then hopefully then become a customer of yours really.

So, definitely, yes. My answer to that is it is worth it. You do not have to make this your priority, but making sure it is there in terms of the things that you need to do to optimise your website is important really.

I have got some action steps for you to do. So, over the next week, choose one image on your homepage and your best, either your best performing page or your page that is closest to the sale. If you do have the ability to upload images that it keeps the file name, then make sure that the image file name is SEO optimised if you can. Sense-check the image. Is it relevant to what you are trying to get this page to show up for?

Is it relevant to what you are talking about in the copy that is next to it? Does it represent your business? Does it represent what you want to show up for? If it does not, then change that, upload a new version of that image. Is it the right size? Is it the right file size?

Is it the right image dimensions? If not, then change that, update it. Make sure that you have added an alt text to that image as well, so make sure you have added that to at least one image on those pages. Then, yeah, making sure that your images are supporting your website, not doing harm to it really.

These are bite-sized actions. This is designed to be simple things that you can do, and if you are not sure, if you are not even sure what your best performing pages are, which a lot of people are not, a lot of people do not know how to even look at this information. Then book a Power Hour. We can dive into this. We can have a look at what is doing well on your website, whether your images generally are the right size or the wrong size. If there is anything major that is causing problems to your website, slowing your website down causing real issues, and any low-hanging fruit and quick wins, book a Power Hour and we can sort through that together.

Conclusion and Community Invitation

Remember to check out those other episodes that I have mentioned so you can just continue your journey of actually making sure your website is working for your business. If you want more support and you want to take these bite-sized type of steps every month on your website, then come and join The Website Growth Club.

It is a supportive community, and it is bite-sized steps, as I say, every month that you can take to make your website work for your business. So, go to thewebsitesuccesshub.com/grow, and that will take you through to the membership page.

Doors are open, you can come and join us, and you are just in time to join before next month's content as well. I hope you have a lovely weekend, and I hope this has been helpful, and I will see you soon. Bye.