Image optimization is very important for those who are engaged with search marketing field. But optimizing a webpage is little bit different from optimizing Images. Before starting about image optimization one thing should be aware is the traffic you receive from image search might not convert in sale. Image optimization, work pretty well for some particular business.
It is very important to optimize your images for search engines. We all know about the common aspects like image naming, alt tag etc. Here I have enlisted some additional thoughts about optimizing the images.
- Image Naming: Use a descriptive name for your file. You should use your important keyword in name of the image. If you are using a long filename you can use hyphen instead on underscore as a keyword separator. For example if you have any image about diamond stud earrings you can name it as diamond-stud-earring-for-sale.jpg instead of non-sense jewelry12548.jpg or just earring.jpg.
- Alt for Images: We all are aware about this tag. We should use a descriptive and appropriate alt text as search engine use this text for reference/information about the image. Additionally your alt tag is displayed on web page when someone opts for not showing images.
- Title Attribute: Use a descriptive title text for your image. You must include your keyword in title tag as it is an important point in image optimization.
- Surrounding text: The text which is used around the image is very important as it adds the relevancy to the image. So must use relevant and keyword rich text around the image.
- Description Attribute: You can use a long Desc attribute to describe the image in detail. It will help to provide information about the content of images.
- Heading tags: The heading tag used on the webpage help in getting ranking for the webpage as well as images. So if the image is very important, you can use the relevant heading tag on the page.
- Incoming links: Just like web promotion, we should add incoming links for the image. Use your targeted keyword with some variation for back links.
- Use the image on relevant page: It helps a lot. You should use the image on the relevant page. For example like above, if your image is about the diamond stud earrings, it is better to use that image on earring page like diamond-stud-earrings.html
- Enhanced image search: For optimizing your images in Google, just log in webmaster account and activate the enhance image search feature.
- Ranking of web page: Ranking for the parent webpage is very important. If you webpage is ranking well then there are a lot of chances to rank your image. If the pages in which you have used the images are not valuable in search engine’s eye then search engine might not rank the image.
Important Notes:- Optimize/reduce the size of images because not all the users use high bandwidth connections. There are lots of chances to visit your images if your images are lightweight.
- It is good Idea to check your images in search engine index. Ensure that your image is not filtered out from safe search filters of search engine. For example your can use site:domainname.com in image search box.
We all know, there is no hard and fast rule in search engine optimization. I have tried to include all the important factors for image optimization, if you think any other important point to add this list feel free to put in comments.
SEO Tips – Get the tips and tricks to boost up your ranking on various search engines by browsing the pages of Important SEO Tips.
Please send your comments/suggesions.
