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Here are some numbers to ponder: According to Google, Google Images has millions of users. The image search engine pulls an average of 1 billion views every day.
Google Images is not the only reason to optimize images. You can generate a lot of traffic through universal or blended searches, too. Have you noticed how Google puts a lot of variation to its search results listings, depending on the type of information you are looking for. You’ll find images, videos, news, and regular content. For example when you type in “Chihuahua,” Google displays some images and put them under the category “Images for Chihuahuas” along with other results. If your images are displayed in the universal search results page, they have higher chances of driving more visitors to your site.
In this article, I will walk you through the top four critical steps for making sure your images get good ranking with Google Images.
1. Make the images reader-friendly.
How do you make readers pick your image over thousands of other images? Never upload photos that seem be in bad need of a professional digital photo retouch. If a photo needs improvement, take advantage of image editing programs. I use Photoshop, but you’ll find many other options.
Most Internet users have little patience. When a page loads slowly, they become upset. They close it and go to the next site. Before uploading a photo, make sure to crop and compress the image to make it more suitable for web pages. Lighter images ensure faster page load times and so helps keep maintain user interest.
2. Use alt texts.
Search engines are smart, but they are “blind”. They cannot “see” images. They depend on textual descriptions to determine what an image is so they can index it. Alt texts serve as titles for images and are the most important optimization technique. They help search engines understand what an image is about and measure its relevance to a search term. Alt texts are what you see when a browser is unable to load or display images. If there’s a problem with image loading, alt texts provide the information on what the image is supposed to be.
The goal of search engines is to make information accessible to as many people as possible, and so they reward websites that help them achieve this goal. When you put alt tags to images, you also make them accessible to visually challenged users.
Alt tags are easy to create. You need only to describe what’s in the image. Examples would be “Canon-camera” or “red-American-roses”. The two key points to remember when creating alt texts are:
- Make it short.
- Make it precise and to the point.
- Make it keyword-rich.
3. Name images correctly.
Your website can generate a lot of free topic with a simple step as using descriptive filename. If you have a website about roses and your images are automatically named something like DSC07654.jpg or image1.bmp, they don’t tell search engines what the image is about. I suggest you change the filenames to something like “american-red-roses.jpg” or “hybrid-roses.bmp”. As with alt tags, optimize the filename with keywords. Use hyphens instead of underscores to make it easier for search engines to understand what the image file is about.
4. Match image to content topic.
If your page is about roses, would it make sense to include an optimized image of a shoe? Match an image to a page that is optimized for your target keywords. If your web page is optimized roses, the image should be about roses. It follows that if you add images for decorative purposes, it’s not necessary to optimize it.
In a Nutshell…
Optimizing image content is much less work than optimizing text-based content. As you can see above, the steps are easy. Optimizing an image takes less than a minute. I know because I’ve been doing this for years.
So take as many photos as you can. Master the techniques of creating high-quality photos by watching free tutorials for PhotoShop. Post your photos. Sit back. Traffic will soon spike up.
Author Bio
James Martell is a successful Internet entrepreneur and affiliate marketer. He and his wife, Arlene, have been helping others become successful in their online endeavors for 10 years now by sharing their knowledge through webinars, live online trainings, affiliate marketing eBooks, and podcasts. The Martells reside in Vancouver, Canada.
