Images and videos make pages more useful and more engaging, but search engines can't "see" them the way people do. They rely on the clues you give them. Get those clues right and your visuals can bring in traffic from Google Images, video results and YouTube. Get them wrong and they just slow your pages down. Here's how to optimise both.
Part 1: Image SEO
Choose the right images
Original images (your products, team, work and diagrams) are more useful to readers and more likely to rank than stock photos that appear on thousands of sites. Place each image near the text it relates to.
Name files descriptively
Rename files before you upload them. blue-cotton-kurta-front.jpg tells search engines far more than IMG_4821.jpg. Use lowercase words separated by hyphens.
Write useful alt text
Alt text describes the image for people using screen readers and for search engines. Describe what the image shows, briefly and specifically, and include a keyword only where it's natural. For example: "Hand-woven blue cotton kurta with white embroidery on the collar". Decorative images can have empty alt text.
Compress and resize
Large images are one of the most common reasons pages load slowly on mobile. Resize images to the largest size they're actually shown at, compress them, and use modern formats such as WebP or AVIF where your site supports them. On WordPress, an image optimisation plugin can do much of this automatically.
Help pages load fast
- Lazy-load images below the first screen, but not the main image at the top of the page.
- Set width and height on images so the layout doesn't jump while they load.
- Serve responsive sizes so phones don't download desktop-sized files.
Add context and structured data
Captions, surrounding text and the page title all help search engines understand an image. For products, recipes and articles, structured data (schema markup) links images to the right entity. Image sitemaps can help Google discover images, especially those loaded by scripts.
Part 2: Video SEO
Decide where the video should rank
If you upload to YouTube, the video can rank on YouTube and in Google's video results, but views go to YouTube. If you host the video on your own page, the aim is for that page to appear with a video result. Many businesses do both: publish on YouTube for reach, and embed the video on a relevant page of their site with supporting text.
Optimise for YouTube
- Title: clear and specific, with the main search phrase near the start.
- Description: a useful summary in the first two lines, then detail, links and chapters.
- Chapters: timestamps help viewers and can show as key moments in Google.
- Thumbnail: a custom thumbnail that's readable at small sizes.
- Captions: upload accurate captions rather than relying only on auto-generated ones.
Our YouTube SEO guide covers this in more depth.
Optimise video on your own site
- Give each important video its own page, with the video visible near the top.
- Add a written summary or transcript, which helps both readers and search engines.
- Add VideoObject structured data with the title, description, thumbnail and upload date.
- Include videos in a video sitemap, or make sure your SEO plugin does.
- Use a lightweight embed that loads the player only when clicked, to protect page speed.
What about audio and podcasts?
Search engines index the text around audio far better than the audio itself. Publish each episode on its own page with show notes, a transcript and links to the topics discussed.
Quick checklist
- Original, relevant images and videos
- Descriptive file names
- Helpful alt text
- Compressed images in modern formats
- Width and height set; the top image is not lazy-loaded
- Video titles, descriptions, chapters and captions
- Transcripts or summaries on video pages
- Image and video structured data and sitemaps
Need help?
Slow, image-heavy pages are one of the most common problems we fix. See our SEO services and WordPress website design, or ask us to review your site.