Image SEO? I never thought of this...

searchbliss · 12-31-2006, 09:31 AM

I found this great read on Image SEO on searchenginewatch.com

Quote:

Image search results are being pushed up more and more into the contextual (web) search results, and to improve usability...

Article:
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3624327

SearchBliss is #1 in Google for "webmaster services" for example, but on the image search ??? Could optimizing images be beneficial? Probably.

transburgh · 12-31-2006, 01:25 PM

That is a very interesting technique. Has anyone tried it? Any luck with it?

Tyler Banfield · 12-31-2006, 02:13 PM

This also goes along with the idea of Picture Bait

Webfu · 12-31-2006, 10:47 PM

Yes I believe it works. I can show you several examples of it in action. The first SEO consultant I ever hired " Professor Dude " told me about 4 years ago to start using this technique because he believed it was a future factor in SEO. Guess what? The old man was right!

For instance - Check out the logo on this jacket search - This one of my favorite examples of this in action....

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...orth+face+coat

Then check out our Webfu logo on this image search -

http://images.google.com/images?svnu...and+web+design

---> Subsequently our websites are #1 for both terms.

No its not just because we named our images with keywords. But we do believe naming an image the right way does help with seo... fortunately a lot people don't know that.

Tyler Banfield · 01-01-2007, 12:32 PM

Quote:

No its not just because we named our images with keywords. But we do believe naming an image the right way does help with seo... fortunately a lot people don't know that.

It's very true. So many people don't take an extra five seconds and just leave their pictures with names like image26.jpg

jumpenjuhosaphat · 01-01-2007, 01:00 PM

Another technique I've heard of is using the "long description" attribute in the img tag. I haven't personally tried it, yet, but my guess is that it will be beneficial, if not now, at some point in the near future.

I have 3 images indexed on google, 2 site images, and a homemade collage. I get more hits from a Google Images than all of the other SE's combined, with nearly 1600 hits in the month of December. I believe that for sites like mine, where images are the majority of the content, that optimizing the images is extremely important. Unfortunately, up until a few days ago, I was optimizing my images wrong. I was using the underscore(_) instead of the hyphen(-) as a word seperator. Once I get that fixed, I'd guess my images will begin to get indexed more by Google, and my hits from GI will at least double.

searchbliss · 01-01-2007, 01:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jumpenjuhosaphat

Another technique I've heard of is using the "long description" attribute in the img tag. I haven't personally tried it, yet, but my guess is that it will be beneficial, if not now, at some point in the near future.

Be careful, you don't want to be penalized for keyword stuffing.

I have also noticed that all of my sites images that are nemed well, like web-tools.jpg, webmaster-forums.jpg, etc., aren't even indexed by Google images, and they have been up for a year??? They are image links as well with matching alt tags. I wonder why?

Webfu · 01-01-2007, 05:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by searchbliss

I have also noticed that all of my sites images that are nemed well, like web-tools.jpg, webmaster-forums.jpg, etc., aren't even indexed by Google images, and they have been up for a year??? They are image links as well with matching alt tags. I wonder why?

It could be for the same reason s- - - - blss.com is stuck on the second page of Google for " web tools " - you say the images have been up for a year, perhaps the content around the images is newer as well? Its a brilliant website and looks like its destined to be in the top 5 for web tools eventually.

Probably won't make or break your serp positioning but my answer to your questions above would be these ideas...

1. Your header/logo should link back to your homepage on a site wide scale.

2. Use a simple alt tag for the header link- "Updated web tools are always to be found here at Yourwebsite.com"

3. Name your header - webtools.gif or web-tools.gif {instead of header.gif}

**John Scott** · 01-02-2007, 06:46 AM

Image SEO is awesome. It drives tons of traffic.

NothingButNet · 01-02-2007, 06:52 AM

Wow.... I have some work to do. Guilty of not taking the time to change some of my product picture names into something more se friendly. Thanks for this thread.

TheBrain · 01-02-2007, 08:20 AM

I think image alt should be use just for its main purpose: image description. Why would you write "SEO, web design." in the alt attribute of an image representing a rose? Why not just "red rose.". I think this "image SEO" will deceive the search engines into indexing some images, influence negatively the image search results and be quite bad for the users with disabilities.

searchbliss · 01-02-2007, 08:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Webfu

It could be for the same reason s- - - - blss.com is stuck on the second page of Google for " web tools " - you say the images have been up for a year, perhaps the content around the images is newer as well? Its a brilliant website and looks like its destined to be in the top 5 for web tools eventually.

Probably won't make or break your serp positioning but my answer to your questions above would be these ideas...

1. Your header/logo should link back to your homepage on a site wide scale.

2. Use a simple alt tag for the header link- "Updated web tools are always to be found here at Yourwebsite.com"

3. Name your header - webtools.gif or web-tools.gif {instead of header.gif}

Great points Webfu. The logo was named "header" because it is a background image which doesn't get indexed so I never bothered to change it. I will eventually take this advice when I can find the time (it's site wide). As far as being on page 2 of Google for "web tools", this was a recent change (a week ago). We we're on page 6, so things are moving up for this term.

Will.Spencer · 01-02-2007, 10:04 AM

On some of my sites, I use an interesting image SEO spam technique which I developed myself and I don't think I've ever publicly explained.

So... here goes...

I have a lot of pages about conceptual things where no image is relevant.

Instead of placing a relevant image, I have a gold star which I rename to have the same keywords as the page and I also give it the same ALT text as the page title. This is all done with the same search&replace that puts the page name and page title inside the page.

So, you get all of the benefits of image SEO without the trouble of creating or finding relevant images for each page.

jumpenjuhosaphat · 01-02-2007, 11:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

On some of my sites, I use an interesting image SEO spam technique which I developed myself and I don't think I've ever publicly explained.

So... here goes...

I have a lot of pages about conceptual things where no image is relevant.

Instead of placing a relevant image, I have a gold star which I rename to have the same keywords as the page and I also give it the same ALT text as the page title. This is all done with the same search&replace that puts the page name and page title inside the page.

So, you get all of the benefits of image SEO without the trouble of creating or finding relevant images for each page.

How well does that work with Googles enhanced image search? I wonder if your images get tagged if the tags are different enough from the name of the image, would it set off any red flags?

QwkSand · 01-04-2007, 01:44 PM

I've also heard that img tags drive in traffic. I've just started on doing this so I don't know if it'll work for my site or not. We'll see...

nasty.web · 01-05-2007, 06:00 AM

Note: if you change only description and file name - file size and date remain the same. Don't you think that SEs can easily spot this?

tinotriste · 01-05-2007, 06:53 AM

Yeah, naming images with target keywords is very important.

I use XNView - http://www.xnview.com/ to rename my images in a flash

TheBrain · 01-05-2007, 12:38 PM

And this is how we learn new spammy techniques. Don't you think that by renaming images using keywords related to... let's say SEO, instead really describing the image we are going to spam? Let's say a SEO site uses a picture of a computer or a server and instead of decribing the picture just like that "computer" , they'll start stuffing the alt with "SEO, search engine optimization" and name the file seo.jpg or something similar. Yes, PCs and SEO are somehow related, but a computer still remains a computer and it is not, in itself SEO. I think I am really missing the point of image SEO!

jumpenjuhosaphat · 01-05-2007, 01:42 PM

Well, when a person does an image search, they are presented with a thumbnail of the image. If they see the image, or the type of image that they are looking for, then they will click on it. With image searching it's pretty hard to spam, because the searcher can see the results up front. Whereas with web searches, all they see is the information that you presented in your description, which can be false or spammy. Now if you include images on your site, say of nude girls, just to trick people into getting into your site, then that would be a successful way of image spamming, but not by changing the words of the image, because even if you can fool the SE's, you still can't fool the viewer. Did that make any sense?

tinotriste · 01-06-2007, 09:13 AM

Sure! There's no point in fooling the search engines if you don't get the visitors in the end.