A picture is worth more than a thousand words – and that’s so helpful for bloggers. Images convey information implicitly. The information is spread very fast through images (think about Pinterest). For this cause, there are some dedicated social sharing sites as well which promote image posting and sharing. By embedding images in appropriate proportions and dimensions, your blog can attract more visitors.
Many-a-times visitors will not go through the entire text in a page rather pay attention to the image on the page and will drift into the text later. In other words, you can simply hook your readers through images. Content of a web page should be optimized to get traffic through search process – you know that already. Similarly, images should be optimized to get traffic from search engines.
Why should you bother about optimizing images? Here’s where it gets interesting. Compared to text listings (where only top 10 links are listed) image listing accommodates more number of images (up to 150). Websites owners have ample chance to win through image search.
Now let’s dive in to the practical part of the story.
Search importance
Google, the largest search engine on the planet has various means to track antecedents of images. Search for images will take place in the same way as it takes place for words. You can search for images through ‘Google Image Search’. The images displayed will be in tune with the keywords used for searching.
When you search for the term ‘notebook’, you will get a list of links in which notebook is used. You will be surprised to find notebook computers instead of physical notebook. This is the trick played by Google Search Engine. The search engine’s algorithm will list websites which are more optimized for the specific keyword.
Unless you learn the art of optimization of your images, your images will not reflect in Google search.
Usually image tag of web page conveys information about the image. The image name selected should be appropriate to your blogging niche and should be noticeable through Google search engine.
Usage of keywords should be appropriate. Otherwise it will generate the wrong traffic that will not help your business. Hence it is required to employ the right keywords to attract the right traffic to your site.
As Google uses a different kind of criteria to list out images you should be able to follow the set criteria to get maximum results from Google image search. When you search for an image on the web, the images displayed will carry some information along with them. You can find the source of the image (on which website it is posted).
You can find the name of the image and the size of the image.
How to optimize images
- You should display the relevant image along with the text posted on the web page. The image file gets a name and this name should be relevant to the popular search made by visitors. Search engines will purely identify images through the filenames assigned to them. It will also look for the text sprinkled around the image to match the relevancy. Hence, the naming of image file is very much important in optimizing images for search engines.
- Every image embedded on a web page will have an alt tag. This tag not only conveys information about the image but also enhances the opportunity for images to be identified through search engines. Generally, the content present in the alt tag will be displayed when the image cannot be posted in the browser due to technical reasons. Hence, the alt tag should be best utilized by stuffing with the most relevant keywords that pertain to the image.
- As search engines are imparted with human intelligence, you should surround the text around the image with relevant keywords used for the image name. In this way, search engine will establish proper match with the image and your web page’s credibility will increase.
- You should post a limited number of images per page. The images should be spread across various web pages of your site. Images should be interspersed across the website since these are gateways to generate traffic on your site.
- Descriptive information should be provided in the title area of hyperlinks’ tags. This will help identify images by the search engine.
- Image size should be as per the Google search engine’s eligibility criteria.
- Images should be uploaded frequently as it reflects freshness.
- Images posted on your web pages can be shared across social networking sites like Flickr to improve search rankings.
- Images should be placed on top of the pages to be identified with Google search engine.
Takeaway
Even if your website is not faring well in text based search where there is heavy competition, you have the opportunity to push images on top of the listings through Google’s image based search.
However do note that you cannot use any image “just like that” on your blog post. Make sure you give proper credit to the free images you use.
You can find lots of royalty free stock images (which is a safer option) on sites like iStockphoto, Jupiter Images, Free Digital Photos, PhotoXpress etc.
Are you ready to rank on image searches?
Image © Pekchar – Fotolia.com
Jamie May 21, 2013 at 9:51 am
Some really great SEO image ideas here, thanks for taking the time to put this together.
Andrew March 19, 2013 at 12:53 pm
Hello Jane, I truly enjoyed reading this post. You’ve done enormous job. I’ve intention to learn how to optimize images along with website. By reading through this post I’ve toughed my knowledge about image SEO and I’m quite excited right now SEO my website images. I think by optimizing website links, images and videos all together a proper search engine result is easier to achieve. Thanks.
Lee March 12, 2013 at 1:10 pm
Hi Jane
I have loads of images on my other site and haven’t given it much thought about optimising my images. Looks like I have been on the wrong tack.
Great info thanks lee
Mike March 3, 2013 at 10:19 am
Rankings always play a big roll with search engines. Images are interesting as I don’t know much about them and how they work on internet. I was always a content and link builder person. It’s good to know you can rank images as well in google I just had no clue how. thanks!
Pollard March 3, 2013 at 5:57 am
Hello
Jane Sheeba,
Very happy because I’ve got the chance for reading your article where you have explained what is image optimization, why it is necessary and how to do it. I’m a learner of SEO, SEM and SMM. I’ve a little bit of knowledge about SEO and its related issue but this article and here shared knowledge give me some precious idea about image optimization which will be very handy for my SEO and this knowledge is really a new edition for me. I’m very thankful to you for this nice contribution. Thanks
sam February 25, 2013 at 11:41 am
Thanks Jane.. image optimization is important specially if you are doing local seo, you can geotag these image for more juice using flickr for example and upload them in to your g+ business page
Sam from SEO Sydney February 9, 2013 at 3:58 pm
Hi Jane, great article on image optimisation. It always frustrates me when I find an ‘optimised’ site that’s missing ALT tags or the images have irrelevant filenames. Like you said optimising an image not only improves the on-site SEO it also offers a gateway to new traffic from Google and Bing image searches.
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Trevor McCann December 13, 2012 at 6:41 pm
Optimizing images can be really helpful. But it all depends on the context of the image.. if its interesting you might get lucky and the viewer will click through to the site. But if it’s generic maybe not…
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Simon October 26, 2012 at 4:50 am
Hey – good post. Images are something people often overlook.
Images can be a pretty powerful tool if used properly, just because they offer so much.
1) Google/Bing/Whatever Image search – it’s low converting, but it’s free exposure
2) On page optimisation – A couple of images with super-relevant alt attributes can provide a nice little boost for your page’s relevance
3) It’s rich media – search engines like it.
4) Use great images/infographics and you’ve got content that’s linkworthy without having to 4 hours writing a stunning piece of content.
Kamran October 23, 2012 at 11:28 am
Hi, Great job you have done it give more information, really help me to understand that this type give more help in seo, many new internet marketer will learn from this topic.Thank
Malcolm Gibb June 19, 2012 at 5:18 am
Great article Jane, I have always been a firm believer of optimising images for SEO. Every chance I get I optimise all the images I can for my blog and client sites. Why? Well I have seen sites where image searches amount for large portions of traffic. It is a relatively less competitive arena to get your images listed in, and there is always the chance your images will show as universal results in the main SERP!
Crescent June 6, 2012 at 1:40 pm
It’s a great concept but will people actually read your article just because of an image? A lot of times if I see an image I’ll go directly to the “full size” section and ignore the article completely.
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Sunny Kr May 2, 2012 at 5:05 pm
Thanks Sheeba for sharing such and Informative article with us all. Extremely Helpful for seo learners. Seo friendly and optimized image can be very well worth a few 1000s of visitors, if not more! Images are considered as an asset in search engine optimization. As we all know that Images can drive a good amount of traffic through image search. A good Product image leave good impact on potential customer. When we give complete information about the image through alt tags, it helps both the potential customer as well as the Crawlers / SE Bots since they get all the details that they need to index your image in the search engine results.
Sheeba , Informative is the word for your article !
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Mohideen May 1, 2012 at 12:44 pm
Images is the right choice to get the attention of the readers but its should represent the content message else no use of using it.
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Mark Thompson April 24, 2012 at 2:30 am
I have several sites that get a lot of traffic from google images, the problem is it’s traffic that usually doesn’t convert. I recently tested adding an inforgraphic to one of my sites… that converted. I guess the moral is if you want converting traffic use relevant images that are interesting
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Rashmi Sinha April 21, 2012 at 6:36 pm
I hope everyone can understand how important this post is. Image location and usage is a great tool for your blog. Now it is even better when SEO uses them as search results. Thank you for sharing this.
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David April 20, 2012 at 9:16 am
Hi Jane, I generally have changed the image file name to fit the post. but I usually ignore the alt tag. I guess I should start using it. Thanks for the great tips!
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Jacko April 19, 2012 at 6:36 pm
For years I have received traffic from pictures. Its some of the most reliable traffic. Do you consider it targeted traffic though?
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Jane Sheeba April 20, 2012 at 8:50 am
You can drive targeted traffic from images by using relevant images and adding relevant alt text (using your post keyword, for instance).
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Carsten April 19, 2012 at 7:29 am
Since I first realised that visitors are coming to my website by image search I have started to put more emphasis on the image related tags and SEO. I to agree to Jane and Charles: Wordpress makes it so easy add this tags. So I can’t understand why one can leave this empty.
Anton Koekemoer April 18, 2012 at 9:00 am
Really interesting views that you’ve mentioned in this post. And yes – Images is an important part of most websites , and to optimize those images for the new Google panda algorithm – will be great for the PR of your website and also the user experience. Thanks for sharing the great post.
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Saket Jajodia from WordPress SEO April 18, 2012 at 3:47 am
Thanks a lot Jane, for these tips, one suggestion from me, for SEO image optimization we should always mention atl, title, width and height in img tag so that Search Engine can get to know more about the image. Thanks once again Jane..!!
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Jane Sheeba April 20, 2012 at 7:16 am
Yes Saket, it all takes just a few more seconds to please the search engines
Saket Jajodia from YouTube April 20, 2012 at 7:29 am
Search Engines are always like GF.. How much time we need to give to pleas them, its enough..
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abhinav April 18, 2012 at 1:30 am
Really great point you discuss with us. its very helpful for my blog thank you so much for sharing this blog post.
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Morgan from Sociable Boost April 17, 2012 at 7:24 pm
Hi Jane!
I love that you’re going outside of the box with image search. I do tend to forget about the alt tag, because I’m just trying to get the pic and post up that I tend to forget about the little details that can work in my advantage when it comes to Google.
This is a good reminder.
Thanks!
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D. Heath April 17, 2012 at 5:15 pm
Right now I’m don’t use alt attributes, however Google uses the text around the images. Some images already have the alt embedded in them. It’s amazing how much traffic you can gain from pictures.
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Jamie Northrup from Montreal Web Consultant April 17, 2012 at 2:46 pm
Image ranking is important, but it depends on the tip of website. A lot of people may just steal the images you use. It is good if you can rank for infographics or other shareable images though.
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JamesW April 17, 2012 at 11:10 am
Great post, ranking high on Google with images ans equally important like text.
And the traffic that image brings convert better too, somehow they know precisely what they want.
thanks for sharing
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Charles Daniels April 17, 2012 at 5:48 am
It always surprises me to visit sites and not find alt attributes assigned to images. It only takes a few seconds and it leaves a nice trail of breadcrumbs back to your site.
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Jane Sheeba April 18, 2012 at 9:32 am
That’s right Charles, it usually takes a few seconds, but the benefits are amazing.
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