This guide was originally posted on WPMU DEV.

How to SEO Images in 2019

SEO image best practices are in constant flux, changing with each latest Google update. Before we jump into the first checklist item, let me bring your attention to what is currently going on in SEO right now.

Image SEO is Back Baby!

For a while, optimizing images for search was a waste of time. In 2013, Google added a view image button. When someone searched for an image and clicked on the view image button, they would be taken directly to the image, not to the page the image was on. And just like that, sites on average lost about 63% of image search traffic.

In 2016, Getty Images launched an anti-competition complaint to the European Commission against Google and then in 2018, they won. Google removed the view image button and image search traffic started flowing to the sites that hosted the images again. Image SEO once again became a high priority in the last few months.

Image Recognition Algorithms are Becoming Scary Good at Identifying Images

Read the rest over at WPMU DEV. There’s even a nifty little checklist for your convenience! 🙂