GIF without an introduction has become a significant feature of online pubic content, well-known for all social media users.
They are these cute graphic pictures impressive than static images, heavily used to convey emotions and sentiments with people at the other end.
These GIFs are no longer an exclusive part of social media chat rooms but has widened its reach to major websites.
Here are of the ways through which you can optimize GIFs for better SEO results:
- Insert Keywords in GIF Tags
After conducting detailed keyword research, you must consider incorporating them into the GIF tags.
They function just like the image alt text that appears when an image does not appear due to errors.
So the GIF tag must accurately describe the movements and actions within the GIF so that Google can crawl to your website through the keywords inserted within.
Use branded keywords as well as keywords used by your competitors for better results.
- Compress Your GIF Files
GIFs are widely known to be large files, at times even bigger than some videos.
So instead of placing these heavy GIFs that might increase the loading time of your website, try compressing the GIF files.
The most common methods of compressing are:
- Lossy Compression: This kind of compression removes some data from the original file, resulting in reduced file size. Yet every time the compression occurs the file loses its clarity and gets blurry.
- Lossless Compression: Here as the name suggests, you may lose only less of the original file and retains the maximum with all important data and image quality. They are comparatively bigger files than lossy compressed files.
Now comes the question of which one to use? Lossy compression offers GIFs with smaller size and less quality, the other offers larger GIFs with high quality.
SEO always sways in favour of websites that load faster, so the lossy compression would be the ideal choice for better SEO rankings.
- Convert GIFs to HTML5 Videos or MP4 Videos: It is a wonderful idea to covert the GIFs to videos that will loop and start playing automatically when visitors enter your website. Cloud Convert, FFmpeg etc. are the tools to be used for converting GIFs to MP4 videos.
- Showcase Your Creativeness
GIFs are fun and engaging graphics which can catch the attention of customers. So use them wisely, convey your brand aim, objectives, services etc. Attractive GIFs that perform well and good among the target audience, have better chances of getting in the good books of search engines for greater SERP rankings.
Captivating and engaging GIFs incorporated into quality contents to emphasis the meaning and gist of contents through visual representation is a great way of impressing the search engines.
GIF Engine Optimization (GEO) has become an important part of all SEO strategical plans. Thus, start making meaningful GIFs in no time.
