If you’ve been to our Intro to Search Engine Marketing Class then you’ve heard us preached about how important the content is on your web site. And because the search engines can not read images it is important that you pay extra close attention to them.
Image search is now the fastest growing vertical search next to contextual search. It is more importantly for you to optimize your images now due to that Google launched its Universal Search.
So how can you optimize your images?
- Robots.txt file: make sure the folder you are using to store your images is not blocked by the robots.txt file on your site. A robots.txt file is a file that keeps the search engines from indexing your pages that you do not want spider.
- Image File Names: name your images that’s related to what they are. If it is an image of a product, save it as that productname.jpg and not just a number from
your camera. - Use the Alternative Text Tag: this is a good place to put in keywords, but don’t keyword stuff it.
- Use Caption Below Image: because the search engines can not read images, it is helpful to have a small description on what the image is about.
- Add Images to Articles and Press Release: if you have an image on your article, press release or even blog post that is on your flickr account, link it out or you can have it linked back to your site. The web marketing image above is from our site so it is linked to www.schipul.com. Not only will it give credit for your image but also some link love.
For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com