Image Search Ranking Tips

Don’t forget the power of having your images ranked highly in search engines through image sites such as Google images and Flickr. Images can be as effective in driving traffic as text, especially with the amount of queries done through Google image search these days. Major SEO firms as well as amateur webmasters can focus on getting images ranked if they know a few key SEO tips when it comes to image features and how to use them to boost rankings.

Alternate text

The first and possibly most important element of an image is the alt attribute, which is part of the HTML code surrounding the image itself. The alt attribute allows search engines to understand what the visual image is. The alternate text in the snippet of HTML code below the image tells Google exactly what the image is about even though it’s not directly visible to or crawlable by the search engine. The search engines can then rank an image in the same way as a page. All it takes is the right text and links being in place to help translate your images. A short complete sentence for your alt text  is better than listing a bunch of keywords. For example, type “A horse wearing a halter” instead of “horse, horse riding, horse training, horse care”

Images as links

You can use images as navigation links. Instead of a text link with the name of one of your products, say, horse halters, have a picture of it instead that the viewer can click on to be taken to that category.  When you use the alt attribute as previously mentioned, not only do you tell Google that you image is about “horse halters” but you tell it that the page it links to is also about horse halters which is very relevant and important). Google likes links even more than text, and having image links in your  main navigation as well as all pages of your site can up your trustworthiness. Just add alt text to all your images and not just photos, and use linked images for navigation so Google gets and extra bit of verification concerning what the pages are about that the links point to.

Relevant surrounding text

Of course, you could try to fool Google by telling it the image is “A horse wearing a halter” when reality it is a photo about something else. So Google looks at the text that surrounds the image on the page. If you have a bunch of horse related photos on one page, don’t depend on just the alt text to get you ranked. You will need relevant text about horses and horse halters to truly back up the claim you are making with your alt text.

Image captions

Use captions for your images as well whenever possible. This repeats the relevant text on the page, and emphasizes your images are about something relevant to the page. Captions are often used to generate the alt text as well in template based systems such as blogs. Your SEO service should assist you in creating relevant content and you should be responsible for gathering copyright free images to go with that content.