4 Ways To Optimize Images For Search Engines

Other than regular searches, image search is also a great source of traffic. My other blogs get good traffic from image searches made on Google and Yahoo. For this reason, images should be used on your blog to take advantage of the potential traffic. But more importantly, these images should be optimized for search engines to make sure you get the traffic from them. Today’s post talks about the top 3 ways to optimize an image for search engines.

Keyword Rich Alt Attribute

Search engines can not read images, which is why the ALT attribute was introduced to give search engines descriptions of the images used in a post or in a website. This helps them get a better understanding of what your site and its images are about.

To see the ALT attribute in action, simply hover on any of the images used on this blog. A pop up text should appear over the image. The text in the pop up is the keyword used in the alt attribute. If there is no pop up text that appears, it only means that the images used on that website or blog are not properly optimized for search engines.

To optimize images for search engines, one thing you can do is to make sure that every non-CSS based image on your website has an Alt attribute complete with description of what the image is depicting. This is a great opportunity to use some target keywords if the shoe fits. For instance, let’s say we have a picture of a man blogging. Your alt attribute should look something like this.

<img src=”http://yoursite.com/images/blogging-man.jpg” alt=”Blogging Man” width=”100″ height=”100″ />

Actually, I can just use the word BLOGGING as my alt attribute but why did I chose to be more descriptive? Don’t you think that there are more people searching for the word “blogging” over “man blogging”? My answer is simple. Firstly, I’m pretty sure that because blogging is a popular keyword, there are a lot of images using blogging as their alt attribute, making competition tough. On the other hand, I can be more descriptive and lessen the competition. By being more descriptive, I also get a higher chance of ranking well for image searches on “man blogging”.

In using images, I would encourage everyone to use relevant images. That way, it would be easier to optimize them for search engines by using relevant keywords in the alt attribute.

Practice Good File Naming

Naming your images properly can lead to a more search engine friendly images. Other than just relying on the Alt attribute, you can also adhere on solid file-naming conventions. Doing this helps search engines better understand a little bit more about what your images are.

For example, we have an image of a man blogging. Here’s a bad way of file-naming your image.

http://www.yoursite.com/images/0012GTX.jpg

Unless someone is searching for “0012GTX” you’re up a creek with that name. However, if you use keywords when naming files then you could gain some value. Instead of file-naming your images using the above method, try this better approach.

http://www.yoursite.com/images/man-blogging.jpg

Additionally, you can use these guidelines when file-naming your images:

• The key is to use relevant keywords.
• While I advice you to be more descriptive of your alt attribute and file-naming, try to keep it short and sweet. Avoid keyword spamming.
• Seperate keywords with a dash (-) as your 1st option, and underscore as your 2nd (_). If you don’t separate your keywords, a search engine won’t know that “manblogging” is really two words.
• Don’t leave spaces when naming your files, as they will show up looking like this blogging%20%man.jpg in your URL. That’s not very pretty, and not very search engine-friendly.

Keep Image File Size Small

While I advice you to use images for traffic purposes, do this in moderation. Don’t go overboard by adding too many images as it could result to a slow loading site. The tendency is, your visitors would leave your site even before they actually get the chance to see your content. It is recommended that you keep your images 30k file size if possible.

Surround Images With Keywords

Strategically insert your images in the article where the keyword you’re targeting appears. For instance, the keyword is “blogging man”, insert the image that is properly file-named with appropriate alt attribute to where the keyword “blogging man” appears. Of if blogging man is nowhere on your post, insert it to where the word “blogging” shows up. This improves the relevance of your image to the keyword, thus, improves its ranking on search engines.

There you have it. Go ahead and optimize your images now. If you enjoy this post, I’d appreciate if you bookmark it and share it to your friends. You can use the bookmarking button below.