When it comes to organic search engine rankings, content is -- and always will be -- king. To attain a high search engine ranking for your keywords, your text should be original, well written, and include variations of the keywords you are targeting. Until recently, images had little or no role in search marketing. That has changed.
Google image search
has seen a 40% increase in visitors from a year ago, according to comScore.
Universal search is currently featured in approximately 17% of all Google searches, that is, search results that include images, video, maps, news, weather, or stocks, along with webpage results, according to comScore's James Lamberti.
But is it really worth optimizing the images on your website? There just isn't enough hard data as yet to know for sure. But so far, image optimization seems to be most advantageous to e-commerce sites and other sites with visual information related to products or services. If you fall into one of these groups, you should definitely consider image optimization. If not, perhaps it isn't worthwhile just yet.
Steps to Image Optimization
Here's how to optimize your images:
Nikon D80 DSLR Camera
Keywords. Determine the best keywords to describe the image. In general, for an e-commerce site it is best to use a mixture of the common name of the item (such as, "Nikon camera") plus the model or ID number of the item (such as, "D80 DSLR"). You may want to verify the most searched for keywords for your product using a keyword analysis tool like Keyword Discovery or Wordtracker. This might be overkill for every image, but it may increase the search visibility for a particular product.
Filename. Use the keywords you found in Step 1 in the image filename. For example, if you are selling a Nikon D80 DSLR camera, include these words along with the words "image" or "picture." The file name could look like this: nikon-d80-dslr-camera-picture.jpg
Nearby text. On your webpage locate the same keywords in text near the image.
ALT Attribute. Include similar keywords within the picture's ALT attribute, such as: "Nikon D80 DSLR camera picture." Voila, you are done!
Google Enhanced Image Search
Consider turning on Google's Enhanced Image Search for your website within your free Google Webmaster Tools account. There is a chance this tool will help improve the quality of traffic to your images. www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=48367
Correlation to Universal Search Results
The top three image results in Ask and Yahoo! search engines tend to be the same as those shown in their universal search results. This gives you a ranking target. Unfortunately, this is not the case at Google, where universal search results are determined by more complex variables. Finally, monitor traffic from image based referrers (such as, images.google.com) within your analytics program to calculate the success of your website's images.
Ross Dunn is CEO of StepForth SEO Services, a search engine optimization firm in Victoria, BC, Canada, founded in 1997. In addition to learning about Internet marketing, he enjoys photography and hiking.
When it comes to organic search engine rankings, content is -- and always will be -- king. To attain a high search engine ranking for your keywords, your text should be original, well written, and include variations of the keywords you are targeting. Until recently, images had little or no role in search marketing. That has changed.
