Hotlinking images have not been discussed to a fair extent so far, and this has led to common misconceptions and doubts.
One of the most common queries people have these days is whether or not hotlinking has a negative impact on SEO. Some even wonder whether hotlinking has any effect on search engine rankings at all.
Internal and external links indeed have significant roles to play when it comes to search engine optimisation. No wonder, more and more businesses are opting for link building services for higher rankings on Google. But does Hotlinking have the same impact? What is the real story? Let’s find out.
What is Hotlinking?
Hotlinking refers to the process of using images on one website on the pages of another. Simply put, you would be linking to an image that is located on another website, enabling viewers to see it from your website as well. Think of it like embedding a YouTube video or a Tweet on your webpage, allowing viewers to see it in full on your own webpage as well.
Also known as direct linking, leeching or inline linking, hotlinking images is quite popularly used by several websites. Instead of citing the source of the image used in a separate text snippet, many websites prefer hotlinking the images instead. Why? Well, they do not have to go through the “pains” of downloading the image, uploading it to their server and then adding the source of the image below it.
Hotlinking Images turns out to be a Bad Practice.
Not only is the hotlinking of images considered “lazy”, but it might also violate copyright issues when done without appropriate permissions or licenses. Mostly, hotlinked images are used directly from business websites or those websites that do not provide open licensing to their images. Hotlinking these images could be a clear case of copyright infringement and could land you in legal conflicts.
But what about SEO? There’s Some Good News and Some Bad.
Keeping these issues aside, it turns out that hotlinking images could be beneficial to SEO. If the hotlinked image has a link to your website’s URL, it would be treated as a proper image by Google and would appear in search results under your website credits.
If the image does not contain any links to your website, however, and is linked to its original URL alone, that would actually increase the chances of your image appearing in Google’s SERP. This is because external links have a more powerful impact on SEO performance for websites and content.
Despite these advantages, hotlinking images are still considered a bad practice. This is because if indeed you are reported for copyright infringement violations, any merit obtained from internal or external linking would cease to hold value. Your website could even have to be pulled down, considering the current state of seriousness and greater awareness when it comes to IPR and copyright issues.
Here’s what you could do for Better Images SEO Instead
If you are inclined upon having your images optimised for better search engine results, which you should be, it is better to opt for other means and methods. From optimising the physical attributes of your images to enriching them with keywords wherever possible, image optimisation could be done in myriad other ways.
Image Resizing
Large-sized, high-resolution images can actually lead to slowing down your website’s loading speed, calling for image resizing if you do not want people to leave your website and opt for a faster one.
Some key aspects that could help optimise images would be to pick the right format (JPEG would be the most recommended for images with lots of elements, and PNG for simpler ones), and the right compression rate for each image.
Using Alt Tags
Unlike website viewers, search engine crawlers cannot understand what an image is conveying simply by looking at it. Alt tags help search engines index your images accurately. At the same time, when your website doesn’t load all at once or when a visually impaired person accesses your website, alt tags can provide them with a ready reference of the image content. Alt tags are a must on the list of items to focus on for better image SEO.
Optimising Image Titles
Most of us tend to ignore the image titles that automatically borrow from the name of the file we upload on WordPress. Renaming it with appropriate keywords and relevance may not have a direct impact on SEO, but could prove to be significant for better user engagement and an additional context to the alt text.
Including Captions
Image captions, especially ones that include the right keywords or are directly relevant to your content and surrounding text can augment user experience more than you could imagine. As Google now places great importance on user experience when it comes to search engine rankings, paying attention to image captions is a safe bet.
Using Relevant Images only
Google has become smarter and much more user-oriented over the last few years, which means the more sensible and relevant your content, the more brownie points you can expect. Using relevant images that complement your text instead of simply filling gaps can actually help you rank better in search engine results.
Using Sitemaps
Put simply, a sitemap is where you can enlist your website’s pages to tell Google and even other search engines about your website’s content structure. Quite literally a map of your site for search engines to follow, site maps are crucial for SEO as they provide much-needed information to search engines about your site’s pages and content, including images.
Therefore, every bit of relevant information about the images used in your site, such as title, description, URL, location, caption, license information, and so on, are presented to search engines in a much more structured and organised manner, making it possible for search engine crawlers to derive exactly what they want from each image. This has a boosting impact on your website’s SEO directly.