Image SEO
In one line
Image SEO is how you make images discoverable across image search, regular search and AI answers — through filenames, alt text, structured data and performance.
Going deeper
The basics of image SEO are surprisingly easy to skip: meaningful filenames, accurate alt text, modern formats (WebP, AVIF) at sensible sizes, and lazy loading. Just doing these four well visibly changes the volume of image-search impressions for many sites.
Wiring images into structured data — Product, Recipe, Article — also opens up rich-result eligibility. For e-commerce, getting product image schema right is high-ROI; for media sites, defining a clean primary image per article often pays off.
GEO is starting to put more weight on 'whose images does the AI actually use in its answer?' Trusted domains, accurate alt and captions, and clean licensing metadata all make an image more likely to be picked.
Related terms
Alt Text
Alt text is the text alternative for an image — used when the image can't render and read aloud by screen readers — and it affects both accessibility and image search visibility.
SEOSchema.org
Schema.org is the shared vocabulary co-sponsored by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex that lets you label what each page means so search engines and AI can understand it.
SEOStructured Data
Structured data is content marked up in a standard format so search engines and AI systems can understand exactly what each part of the page means.
SEOCore Web Vitals (CWV)
Core Web Vitals (CWV) is Google's set of headline metrics for quantifying page user experience — covering loading, interactivity and visual stability.
SEORich Snippet
A rich snippet is a search result enriched with extra information — star ratings, prices, images, FAQ — that tends to outperform plain text results on CTR.
SEOVideo SEO
Video SEO is the practice of optimising metadata, schema and video sitemaps so that your video content surfaces in regular search, video tabs and increasingly inside AI answers.
How does your brand show up in AI answers?
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