SEO Techniques and Tips

4 Simple Techniques to Image Search Engine Optimization

Google images - http://images.google.com/

Another form of traffic that is to have your images indexed in Google Images. The first thing to know about Google Images is that you cannot simply submit the images you wish to be indexed. Google's image bot will add your images automatically to the index. Common belief is that Google's image bot will spider your site roughly twice per year. This is where your search optimization techniques come and it is important to optimize your images.

There are a 4 simple techniques that are easily within your control.

1. File Name - the image should be named with keywords in mind. In the example below, the image is named homeless-reader-newyork.jpg But let's take this a step further and utilize the directory as a keyword. Like /people/homeless-reader-newyork.jpg

2. Image Title - part of your standard practices in building your html pages needs to be to put a relevant image title. This is similar to the file name technique where you want to add relevant keywords.

3. Image 'alt' Text - Utilize the 'alt' text for an image to further elaborate on the relevant keyword aspect.

<IMG src="/people/homeless-reader-newyork.jpg" width="250" height="374"
ALT="Homeless in New York"
TITLE="New York Homeless Person Reading">

4. Text Near Image - This is where you have a little more room to add a few additional keywords. Google will take the text that is right on top, side, or bottom of the image and try and determine a greater relevancy to the image keywords. For example in the image below I state "Photograph of a homeless person taken outside of church in Manhattan, New York. Canon IDS Mark II - 1/90 sec f8"
I do want to caution you to not "overstuff" the keywords. This will reduce the relevancy and thus weight that Google will give to your image. So you don't want to name an image like "homeless-person-read-newspaper-newyork-photo-chuch-poverty-canon.jpg" -- you get the point.

A couple of other factors that Google looks at is your Google Page Rank (extensive topic in itself) and the length of time an image is in the index. Putting an image up for a couple of month and changing the URL or removing it from the site is not recommended. Create a page that will not be removed even if you do not like the page from your main page. You have created the page therefore keep it live.

I welcome you to post your comments and experiences regarding SEO for images.

-- Dan Kosmayer