Image Search Optimization
Do you have a lot of good high quality images on your website, but no one is seeing them? There are a few guidelines to follow that will increase your chances of being ranked in the image search engines.
Don’t embed text inside images
Search engines can’t read text embedded in images. If you want search engines to understand your content, keep it in regular HTML.
Give your images detailed, informative filenames
The filename can give Google clues about the subject matter of the image. Try to make your filename a good description of the subject matter of the image.
- Example: dog-playing-in-waterfall.jpg is much more informative than IMG00014.JPG
Descriptive filenames can also be useful to users: “If we’re unable to find suitable text in the page on which we found the image, we’ll use the filename as the image’s snippet in our search results.” -From Google Helpdesk
Image Quality
Try to use high resolution images.
Think about possibly creating a separate landing page for a full resolution image with relevant information or link to the full-sized image instead of only providing the thumbnail
Create great alt text
The alt attribute is used to describe the contents of an image file. It’s important for several reasons:
- *It provides search engines with relevant info about the image.
- *When the image can not be displayed the alt text will replace it.
Not so good:
img src=”search.jpg” alt=”"/
Better:
img src=”search.jpg” alt=”search”/
Best:
img src=”image-search-optimization.jpg” alt=”Example of image search optimization”
To be avoided
img src=”search.jpg” alt=”search search engine search engine optimization image search google image search google image optimization seo iso”/
Stuffing alt attributes with keywords (“keyword stuffing”) results in a poor user experience, and may cause your site to be perceived as spam. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.
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I can’t exactly quantify how much of a difference this has made, but I do seem to get quite a few more Google image search hits since I started also adding a TITLE attribute (in addition to the ALT) to my images.
Where the ALT (alternate text) attribute serves as a textual placeholder for an image in browsers that either don’t support images (some mobile browsing platforms, for example) or have the image display option disabled (to speed up page loads, for example), the TITLE attribute serves as an image caption or tooltip (visible on mouseover) for your image.
And I believe that browsers with accessibility features enabled can also verbally “speak” this info for those who are visually-impaired.
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