The logo is the most important image associated with a website and a brand. The company’s identity is visually expressed through its logo. Yet very few webmasters focus on optimizing logo from an SEO perspective.
We all know, the importance of a logo cannot be ignored specifically when it comes to branding and making the right impression on your target audience. Isn’t it?
Don’t worry, check this guide to get the most out of it. Here we are going to learn few most important and basic things regarding logo such as: Why is a logo so important for a website? Why should you optimize your website logo? and, How to optimize your website logo for search engines? Here we go.
Why is a Logo So Important for a Website?
Before talking about the optimization in terms of SEO (search engine optimization), I must emphasize why the logo is a prominent element of each site and is so important for its structure. The logo helps to establish a connection with your visitors, making sure that they remember your site among others.
Therefore, you should invest your time to create an attractive logo for your business. If you do not have money to spend on logo designing and you think you can create a logo by yourself, you can try a free online logo generator service like Spaces Logo Maker.
You might also like to see: Top 10 Best Free Logo Maker Software for Windows
Why Should You Optimize Your Website Logo?
Simple. Google needs to figure out what your site is about, so to understand your market.
Optimizing your website logo and images could help improve your rankings on some keywords as well, and not only on Google Images. If you don’t properly work on them, you could lose potential opportunities.
The “secret” lies in providing the anchor text through the logo on each page of your site, which leads to the main page. If the text is created in a strategic way, it will enhance the relevance of the main page in relation to the keywords used.
How to Optimize Your Website Logo for Search Engines
The following are the steps you should take if you want to improve your search engines rankings, working just on your website logo.
Use Your Keywords as File Name
This is one of the most commonly repeated errors. Categorically avoid to name your logo file as “logo.jpg“, “logo.gif“, or “logo.png“.
You have to help search engines understand what is the main topic of your site and you can do this, by renaming the logo file with your target keywords.
For example, if your website is about Android tutorials, consider renaming your logo file as “android-tips.png” or “android-tips.jpg“. This little shrewdness will concretely help Google understand that your website offers Android guide and suggestions.
Add Alt Tag to image
If you have some familiarity with the classic elements of SEO, you should already know that the ALT attribute of the <img> tag is a basic means to associate images with the content.
I think there are numerous webmasters excited of the fact that search engines have strengthened their ability to interpret the content of images and bind them to the specific keywords. However, it is still an imperfect science and by adding the ALT text in the IMG tags of your files, you can cast an extra signal.
Following this practice can be useful to reinforce any prior knowledge of the image, in addition to providing the keywords if the search engines algorithm has not deducted yet.
Use Dashes, Not Underscores
For years, in the SEO field, people has been discussing about the differences between dashes and underscores, the significance of their union or separation and what it is better or worse.
Regarding the images, also in terms of readability, it is better to use the dashes. Your file name, then, should be “android-tips.png” and not “android_tips.png“. Easy, right?
Lighten the File Weight
The main goal of the search engines is to provide users the best information in the shortest possible time.
The weight of the logo and all your website pictures, therefore, may have a heavy impact on your rankings. If your images are too heavy, they will increase the loading time of your site.
Google keeps track of this factor because it knows that the users do not like to wait for slow loading pages. The pages that load quickly have more opportunities to reach higher positions than the slow pages, as they provide a better experience to the user.
PRO Tip: Since more than one year, I found out that switching my sites from a shared server to a dedicated one has dramatically improved the loading time of my web pages. Therefore, I suggest you to choose a reliable hosting service.
Connect Your Logo to the Home Page
To have a fully optimized logo, it is vital that it is connected to the homepage of your site.
Make sure that the link address is the standard of the main page.
Use the Schema.org Markup for Logos
In May of 2013, Google introduced the Schema.org markup for organization logos.
Basically, this is a semantic markup that helps the search engines to discover which of the images of a site should be considered as the official logo.
It should be pointed out that the protocol provides several categories of organizations and local companies, so you can customize the value of your itemtype attribute referring to Schema.org.
The Schema.org markup has the main function to increase the chances that Google will allow your logo to appear in the panel of the Knowledge Graph (provided that Google is showing one in searches related to the name of your business or your brand).
Obviously, there are also benefits related to search ranking, because taking up more space with a graphic element placed either on the right or within the organic results, exponentially increase the click through rate. This increase in CTR will likely result, over time, in an even better position.
Final Words
I hope this small guide is going to help you improve the optimization of your website logo in terms of search engine optimization.
What do you think?
Have you already implemented all these logo optimization strategies?
If you really think that this guide helped you in knowing what is logo optimization and how to optimize your website logo for SEO then Please feel free to share your views in the comments below, thanks!
About the Author: This post is contributed by Erik Emanuelli. He is a problogger and social media marketer. You can find out more about him at No Passive Income blog.