Optimizing images with local keywords is somehow an overlooked SEO strategy. Many businesses focus on content optimization and backlinks, and oftentimes overlook the importance of optimizing images for local SEO impact.
However, by using local keywords in your image file names, alt texts, and in surrounding content, you can increase your visibility in search results and enhance user engagement and user experience.
In this guide, we share our top approaches to optimizing images with local keywords.
Why Optimizing Images with Local Keywords is Important?
In modern days, optimizing images with local keywords is no longer an option – it is essential for location-based businesses. Search engines crawl and index textual content, but they can also evaluate visual elements to extract maximum information and get a better understanding of the context in which these elements exist.
This means that search engines also analyze file names, image alt texts, structured data, and the surrounding content of an image. Should these elements contain relevant local keywords, they become ranking signals that help your pages appear in high positions in local search results.
Furthermore, well-optimized images can contribute to enhanced user engagement, which is are signal towards search engines to further boost your website’s SEO score and rankings in local results.
What Makes a Keyword Local?
A local keyword is a search query keyword that includes geographical data, such as a name of a city, region, neighbourhood, landmark, precise street address. Such search queries reflect the user’s desire to find services, products or information that is specific to a certaing geographic location. This makes the local keywords essential for local businesses such as carpenters, restaurants, bars, and similar.
Examples of local keywords include:
- Plumber in New York City.
- Wedding Photographer in Prague.
- Luxury hostels in the city centre, London.
- Best pizza delivery in Kansas.
Local keywords are essential for businesses with a physical presence, and for organizations that offer location-based services, such as restaurants, real estate agencies, repair technicians, legal professionals, and others. Adding local keywords in your website’s images, especially in places such as image file names, alt text, and image URLs, improves the visibility in local search results.
When crawling and analyzing a website, search engines use metadata from your website images to get maximum information and context, and if your visuals contain references to locations users are interested in, your website content has a greater chance of positioning high in search results regarding this local query.
1. Use Local Keywords in Image File Names
A strong approach in optimizing images with local keywords is the proper naming of your image files before using them on your website. In most cases, images come with generic names such as IMG_432a.jpg or, for example, DS80492.jpg, which don’t mean a thing to either users or search engines. In other words, such image names do not give any information or context about what the image is about or why it is relevant to the context it is used in.
This is why, to maximize your local SEO impact, you need to rename your images by using clear, descriptive, and location-specific keywords that reflect both the content of the image and the geographical area you target. For example, a bakery operating in central Bari, Italy, that cooks vegan pastries, can use a strong image name such as this:
bari-italy-center-vegan-bakey-pastries.jpg.
This is a simple, and yet effective method, as it gives semantic relevance of the image’s name, image URL and gives strong signals that the content is relevant to local search queries.
Tips and Tricks:
- Use hyphens (-) instead of underscores (_), as search engines look on hyphens as word separators, and when you use them, you make it easier for Google to read the title and URL of your image.
- Avoid keyword stuffing. Avoid cramming and overusing a local keyword, as this is considered a bad practice, and instead of manipulating the search engine to boost your SERP position, you will make it penalize your website.
- Match the Image Content. Make sure that the file name reflexts what is shown in the image – this approach improves user trust and search engine understanding.
- Include specific locations. Use names of cities, neighbourhoods, landmarks, and precise street addresses to enhance your local optimization intent.
2. Use Descriptive Alt Text with Relevant Local Keywords
Image Alt texts are a very important element for image SEO and web accessibility. This alt text provides a written description of what the image is about and helps both visually impaired users and also gives an explanation to search engines what the image describes, as these machines can’t “look at” images the same way people do, and therefore rely on text explanations.
When optimizing images with local keywords, always add relevant alt text to each of your uploaded images. To do so, along with other descriptions, add a relevant geographic term naturally. An example of a good alt text is:
alt=”MaxDent is a contemporary and luxury dental clinic in the central district of Prague”
Descriptive alt text is important for local SEO, as it improves the chances your image appears in Google image search results. This is especially important for businesses that rely heavily on visuals – storefronts, interior design, bakeries, and others.
Tips and tricks:
- Use a specific and concise alt description. Describe clearly what the image is about.
- Always use natural language. Avoid unnatural and awkward-sounding phrases, and avoid stuffing local keywords. Write as if you are describing the image to a person.
- Always include the location you are targeting in the alt description.
- Avoid using the same alt text on multiple images and multiple pages. Each alt text should be unique and reflect the image’s distinct content, otherwise, you can prompt keyword cannibalization.
3. Add Structured Data to Images
Adding structured data to your images is a powerful way of enhance local and image SEO. Structured data refers to a standardized code that helps search engines understand the content, context and purpose of each element on your website, including images. When used correctly, structured data can greatly improve your website’s search result visibility.
When optimizing images for local keywords, adding structured data helps search engines recognize the image’s relationship to a certain business, service, and location. Adding structured data is very effective on:
- Local business landing page.
- Products and services listings.
- Portfolio and case study pages with images.
- Event pages that feature locally targeted promotional material.
4. Place Images Near Relevant Local Content
A lesser-known, but effective technique in optimizing images with local keywords is placing your images next to contextually relevant page content that targets the same intent. Search engines don’t simply analyze images in isolation – they interpret them concerning everything else that surrounds them on the given web page. This means that your local SEO approaches can significantly vary, depending on where an image is placed on your web page.
When a crawler (also known as a spider) crawls a given web page, it extracts meaning and context not only from metadata such as alt texts and image file names, but also from textual content surrounding the image. This means that if an image is placed in a section where you talk about a certain city, neighbourhood, or restaurant, the search engine can relate the context of the given text to the image itself. For example, in a text paragraph titled “Contemporary Dining Room Design Remodeling Services in Kansas”, an image with a dining room photo can be uploaded with relevant alt text, image file name, and URL. Should this be done correctly, Google and other search engines get stronger signals compared to a page with text and a random image with random alt attributes.
An example adoption of this approach:
Imagine you are optimizing a page for a construction company in London. You might have a paragraph, “Our Residential Construction Project in Central London”. To get the most out of proper image placement, you should upload an image with a relevant name, for example, central-london-construction-project.jpeg. Then, you add an alt text such as this one: “Modern and luxurious residential construction project in Central London”, and then insert a caption that completes the context of the image, such as this one: “Elegant and modern residential project takes place in the beautiful central part of London.”
Such an approach aligns neatly the image filename, alt text, and surrounding text, which sendsa strong local SEO signal, increasing the chances your image and text appear higher in local SERP results.
Tips and tricks:
- Insert images near local keyword-rich headings and paragraphs.
- Use image captions when appropriate.
- Avoid random placement.
- Keep text and relevant images close to each other.
5. Make Images Responsive
In today’s mobile-first era, responsive images are an essential asset for each marketer and SEO expert. A great number of searches is conducted on mobile devices and many of these include local queries, for example “best sushi restaurants near me” or “vehicle repairs in Northern Berlin”. This means that your website images should be optimized to fit various screen sizes, as if this doesn’t happen, you can lose visibility and credibility.
This is where responsive images shine. Such files automatically adapt to the screen size and resolution of the user’s device and always ensure fast loading speeds and proper image display. When such images are used in conjunction with local keywords, your website increases its chances for more result page visibility.
In short, responsive images are important for several reasons:
- They improve loading times. Small devices get small image versions and therefore their size is reduced, which also reduces loading times – a very important ranking factor in mobile search.
- Better user experience. Properly scaled images prevent layout changes and visual clutter, improving readability and engagement.
- Improved local discovery. When combined with local SEO intent, responsive images allow users to access various types of high-quality visual content to be accessed quickly and easily.
- Avoidance of SEO pendalities. Slow loading speeds and non-responsive images can trigger negative metrics and therefore harm your SEO score.
6. Use a Content Delivery Network
When optimizing images with local keywords, it is important to think about delivery speed and availability, and this is where Content Delivery Networks (CDN) shine.
A CDN is a globally distributed network of servers that are designed to deliver web content, especially media files from the locations closes to the end user. This means that instead of pulling every image or video from the main hosting server, a CDN caches these images across data centers and delivers them to the end user in greater speeds.
If you are interested in the topic, then check out our article regarding CDNs:
What is Content Delivery Network
7. Analyze and Improve Performance with PageSpeed Insights
No SEO strategy is complete without performance testing and monitoring. This is where Google’s free Pagespeed Insights tool comes into play. This tool evaluates your website’s loading times on desktop and mobile devices and provides you with numerous recommendations on how to improve performance and enhance your SEO score.
Such analysis is important because it grants you tons of data about:
- Largest Contentful Paint – influenced by image loading speed.
- First Input Delay – a responsiveness measure.
- Cumulative Layout Shift – affected by improperly sized images.
- Tons of additional useful data.
To use the tool, do the following:
- Go to Pagespeed.
- Enter the URL of the page that you wish to audit.
- After the evaluation has finished, review the image-specific recommendations under Opportunities and Diagnostics.
- Apply the suggested fixes.
- Retest after fixing.
- Monitor your pages regularly.
Conclusion
Optimizing images with local keywords has gradually become a foundational SEO strategy for businesses with local activity.
Search engines become more context-aware and reward websites that state a clear signal of location, intent, and relevance. This means that when your website images are tailored not only to what users are searching, but also where they are searching from, you can position your website in pretty high result positions.
Optimizing images with local keywords contributes to:
- Higher rankings for local searches.
- Fast loading times.
- Increased engagement and conversions.
- Improved accessibility for all users.
