8 Ways to Improve Your Website Images

Do you like your images on your website? Do they capture the essence of your property? Are they optimized for SEO? Good photography is essential to your property website, social media, and even email marketing. Here are eight ways to improve your website images.

1. Stock images vs. original images

Does your website have mostly stock images? If so, consider swapping out and or adding in original images of your property and the area. Using a lot of stock images won’t help your SEO, ultimately making you less likely to stand out from your competitors. Do the research and invest in high-quality photography to help tell the real story of your property.

Taos Pueblo: Original image

Family vacation: Stock image

2. Image categories

If you haven’t already done so start categorizing images on your website. For example, make sure your accommodations page has detailed images of your rooms, your amenities page has a collection of all your amenities that you offer. Do not clutter your pages with other images that do not pertain to the main topic. Additionally, image galleries such as a wedding gallery or a golf course gallery are effective at building engagement on your site.

3. Image-file name is important

You may not think your image file name is important, but it is! Properly naming your images with one or two-word descriptions of what they are is an important SEO tactic. So, assign descriptive words and incorporate keywords in the title of your image files.

4. Images for mobile

While you may have a fully responsive website, it is important to make sure your images are optimized for mobile experience. Think of the images you upload to the desktop version of your website will it have the same effect on mobile as it does on desktop?

5. Use SEO-friendly alt text

To ensure your images are readable to search engine crawlers, add descriptive alt text (image alt tags) to each image you upload. Every image should have a succinct description that tells the user exactly what is in the photo. Adding accurate alt text to your images will also help with your SEO strategy, which allows your site to gain better rankings in image searches.

6. Image sizing

As you add more and more images to your website, image size becomes a concern as this can start to slow down your site speed, which ultimately will have a negative impact on SEO. Large image files should be compressed, without jeopardizing image quality. Think about the image and how it is going to be used to help determine image file size. To further help in optimizing your image file sizing, use our Website Image Sizing Guide.

7. Well stocked image file

What are your current images of? The general interior, exterior, and facilities most likely, which are all necessary images to have. But consider expanding your image portfolio and provide photography that captures your amenities, local attractions, events, and sites to see in the area. Creating a local library of images provides potential guests with something they can connect with. These images also provide useful content for blogs, social media posts, and email marketing campaigns.

8. Photos that appeal to your customers

Think of your customer and who they are. Who are you trying to appeal to? Your photography should connect and draw your customer in and create a relationship with your business. The path to great photography for your website begins with branding and your property’s positioning. So, put your customer cap on and think, is this an image my customers are going to want to see?

Great photography is a key part of your marketing foundation and should be thought of as a critical tool in gaining new customers.