What is the best way to upload an image for SEO

[nicolebd]

I have a site that is largely based on images. It runs on Wordpress. Each page has about 10 images. What is the best way to upload images?

1. As a WP gallery.

2. As another gallery (with a gallery plugin)

3. As seperate images uploaded via WP (it shows a thumbnail which is links to the larger image). That way each image can have a title.

4. As seperate images uploaded via FTP in which case I would then make a thumbnail which will link to the larger image. This option would only be good if WP does not optomize the thumbnail images that it creates.

5. As a text title which links to the image.

Since most of my content is based on images and mostly comes from Google images I was wondering what the best method to use is.

[AlanMosley]

The best way is to make sure you have a alt tag, and use the imageobject schema to mark it up.

http://schema.org/ImageObject

[DougRoberts]

Agree with Robert, however you chose to manage / present your images is up to you and will be dependant on the number of images and how frequently you're uploading etc.

What matters more is giving your images context and meaning by (as Robert says) great captions that describe the image, good titles that help make your the images accessible to those using screen readers and search engines.

Grouping images by category and adding a good category description that helps provide context can help.

[RobertFisher]

Nicole,

Since you are using WP, I think it would be easiest and do not know of an SEO loss with WP media gallery. With that, all images are at your fingertips for any editing you may wish to do whenever you wish to do it.

Make sure you have given each img a good alt text description of up to about 140 characters. (Do not try to keyword stuff, etc. - imagine you are blind "seeing the image" by description). Do not over edit the image when you upload it as once you have compressed, cropped, etc. that image you cannot reverse it. Or save two in the media gallery and title one edited and one unedit in case you wish to make a later change.

You have the option of titles and captions and I would create my own on both in order to accurately portray my message about the image. (I believe both are important in SEO. Captions do help the reader.)

Best