Okay, you found the Perfect Image,

Optimize that Puppy.

Finding and using the right type of image for your website is crucial. A great place to start is good old Flickr.com. It has a wide selection with an ability to filter content by license.

Some other popular options include:

• Freeimages:
• New Old Stock:
• Public Domain Archive:
• Unsplash:

After you have done all the due diligence and found and chosen the right image, you now need to decide which file format will be optimal for your needs on your particular article. You will usually need to choose from three commonly used raster image formats: JPEG, GIF, & PNG.

• JPEG - The biggest advantages of using this format is it keeps file sizes small and it is supported almost everywhere. JPEG is the most commonly used image format today. It uses lossy data compression; so depending on your settings, the image quality can suffer quite a bit. There is also no support for transparent backgrounds like there is with GIF and PNG formats.
• GIF - is a bitmap image format used for simple art and animations. It's not recommended for photographs or more photorealistic images. However, its small file size and support for transparent backgrounds make it ideal for company logos and various page elements of websites. This type of image is used by Cheryl Brown to send me Teddy Bear Hugs when I am feeling down.
• PNG - This file format is the newest of all three, which means it's not so readily supported. Also, file sizes can be a bit larger. PNG supports transparency, has a better color range, and automatic gamma correction ability & can store a short text description of the image’s content to help search engines categorize your images.

Use an online compression tool like TinyPNG or Compress JPEG. Simply upload your image and the web application will take care of everything for you.

When optimizing images for the web, your goal is to reduce the file size as much as possible, without sacrificing too much in terms of image quality.

4. Pay attention to alt text

Alt text (short for “alternative text”) shows as text to all users when there are problems rendering the image. They are also used by screen readers that help the visually impaired navigate the internet. When they come to your website and the automatic reader scrolls over you images the alt text will be read aloud.

A simple alt image tag is enough to tell Google and other search engines what the picture is about and when appropriate for the article, this will help you rank better in the SERPs.

If you are using the AIO SEO PRO Pack or even the freebie form of it, I don't know about your Yoast poop now, you are already using a sitemap for your site (and you should), you can add image information to it or create a separate sitemap just for your images. This is important.

Google really likes it when you use image sitemaps to give their search engine more information about the images on your website. This allows Google to find even JavaScript code images. The wittle Teddy bear on the landing page of SpiritualAttack.com is not an actual image as you would identify images, which is often the case with product images and slider galleries.

Calm down, now. Creating the sitemap is not too complicated. You can find more information and a complete set of image tag definitions here.

Since Wealthy Affiliate uses the WordPress website Software, you can also use the available plugins. For instance, Google XML Sitemap for Images and Udinra All Image Sitemap both automatically create Google XML sitemaps for images.

The easiest way to integrate your images into social media platforms is to add social media sharing buttons to your website. One of the most popular ways to encourage visitors to share your images to Pinterest is to add a simple "Pin It" button to each one.

A great tool to use is Image Sharer by SumoMe. With Image Sharer, you can easily allow visitors to share the images on your site and link back to you. It supports Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Yummly.

The best place to turn to when trying to figure out just what it is that Google is looking for and expecting from us is Google. Google has prepared a set of image publishing guidelines to help us optimize our Websites & Blogs for their search engine and our visitor. You can find these in Googles Webmaster Guidelines.

Where exactly do I go, Teddy Bear? Well, I'm so glad you asked. You can find the complete guide here. It includes detailed information on the topics discussed in this article, and much more.