Optimizing your local business images for your NAP information and your keywords helps us show our business as more relevant to our city and industry. The business that Google views as the most relevant to their city and industry in their local market is the ones that Google shows first in local searches.
So, it is important to optimize your images in local SEO. It is a small part of showing a business’s relevance, but it is one Google has come to look for. Google has said in their guidelines that they read the data in our images to look for information as they scan local business websites.
In this article, I will talk about the data I put in my local business images when optimizing them for local business websites. See also my article “Benefits Of Geotagging Images For Local SEO?“.
Title and Subject Areas
First, you should always use JPEG images on your local business website because it allows you to add information to more areas when you optimize them.
What I always put in the title of the image is the business name, as you have it listed in your Google Business Profile, as well as your city and the abbreviation for your state, as you see in the above example.
In the subject spot, again as it shows in the above example image, I always put my primary Google Business Profile category along with my city and the abbreviation for their state.
We are trying to tie our business to our city and state as well as to our primary Google Business Profile category.
Ratings and Tags Areas
The ratings area, I think, is kind of funny. Their purpose is for you to be able to rate all the images in your various collections according to quality or preference. We don’t really use it for anything in local SEO other than I always mark it as five stars so that Google knows I like the image, and I have learned that Google prefers things to be filled out as completely as possible. So that is what I do.
The tags are just what you would think they are. This is specifically for tagging your images with keywords. In the image world, the keywords would have to do with what is in the image. For example, if the image is of a happy-looking puppy, your tags would be happy and puppy.
But for our purposes, we also want to add the keywords we are targeting on the page. So, for example, if your page is on brake repair, you would want to add the tags that relate to what is in the pictures as well as all of the keywords you want to show up under related to brake repair.
Comments Area
As you can see in the above image in the comments section, if the image is for one of the business’s location pages (or for all pages if it is a single location business), then I always list the business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) in their first.
Then, I used to include the URLs for my website and my Google Business Profile. But now I instead insert my whole schema markup for that location page (or all pages if it is a single location business).
Adding your schema markup into the images on your location pages is not the only place you need to add your schema. You still want to embed a map to your Google Business Profile listing and insert your schema markup inside the iframe of that map embed. But having it in the comments section of the images for your location pages is really helpful.
If these images are not for one of my location pages on a multi-location business website, then I just reinsert all of my keywords that I put in the tags section of the image again in the comments section. Hopefully, that makes sense.
Final Thoughts
Almost nobody optimized their images for local business websites ten to fifteen years ago. Now, almost everyone does. I have heard it argued that it doesn’t really matter now since everyone does it, but that is not true.
Good local SEO is about doing every good thing your competitors do to make yourself relevant to your city and industry and make yourself stand out, plus a little more. The fact that so many local businesses optimize their images makes it more important than ever!
Thank you for reading this article all the way to the end! I hope you understand this topic a little better now. If you got a benefit out of this article, please share it on your social media! That really helps us get the word out!