Google has something called Universal Search, or blended results. It can show regular HTML results, but can also include images, videos, local directories, news and more. This is the way the search engines seem to be moving. Ask.com also does the same thing.
There are two good reasons to optimize your images. One, optimized images will can aid your overall search engine optimization on your pages. And, two, the searches engines will put your images in their images directory and you could have visitors to your site when people do an images search.
We will take a look at several things you should do to optimize your images to be found by the search engines.
Setting Up Your Alt Tags Correctly
Alt tags were originally used for site impaired people who were using the Internet. Basically, in the alt tag you are telling the search engine what your image is all about. You should put your keywords in the alt tag. Don’t try to put a million keywords in the alt tag or you will lose its effectiveness, just as you wouldn’t stuff your Title tag or on-page with keywords. You want to keep the same keyword theme in your alt tags as you are using on your page.
Name Your File with Keywords
Putting keywords in your image name can help, too. Not only does this help in organizing your images, but the search engines will regard your image as more relevant if keywords are in the name of the image. I like to use hyphens in the name to separate they keywords rather than using underlines. Many people believe that using a hyphen will denote a space and keep the words from running together. The underline doesn’t seem to do this. Also, avoid using spacing because the search engine will put funky code in place of the space.
Use Text on Your Page that Matches Your Images Keywords
This is more like which came first, the chicken or the egg. Really, you want to have the alt text match the content on your page. The search engines will rank your image higher if the text surrounding images.
Submit Your Images
The search engines will naturally find your images but it’s also advantageous to submit your images to them. By categorizing and tagging your images and photographs you can have more control over how your image is indexed.
Here are several of the most popular image directories you can submit to:
- Images.google.com
- Thumbshots.org
- Ditto.com
- Picsearch.com
- Images.search.yahoo.com
- Like.com
Setting up your images correctly can have a great impact on our effectiveness in the search engines. Your regular optimization will benefit, and you could get visitors as a result of an image search.