Starting SEO for Images: 5 Quick Tips
***Guest Post***
Getting your images to rank in search engines can be as effective in driving traffic as text can be, especially with the amount of queries done in image sites like Google images and Flickr. Even a non-technical user or beginning SEO-er can easily start getting images ranked by focusing on a couple of key image features when it comes to SEO. More on SEO for photographer websites and blogs in this ebook.
Alternate text
The most basic element of an image is the alt attribute that lives within its HTML code. The alt attribute allows a machine, like a search engine, to interpret the visual image that it normally would not be able to understand. For example, by looking at alternate text within the snippet of HTML code below, you know exactly what my image is about even though you can’t see it. A search engines works in the same way and can rank an image in the same way as a page if the right text and links are in place to promote your images.
<img src=”/racecar.jpg” alt=”Red Sports Car Driving on a Racetrack”>
Use a short complete sentence for your alt text and do not list a bunch of keywords.
Images as Links (Navigation)
Many websites use images as its main navigation links. For example instead of a text link that says Products, you have it as an image that a search engine cannot read. When you use the alt attribute as previously mentioned, not only do you tell Google that you image is about “Products” but you tell it that the page it links to is also about products (much more important). Google weighs links more heavily than text, especially in main navigation when the links are on all pages of your site. So remember to use alt text in all your images and not just photos, and especially the linked images, so that Google knows what the pages are about that the links point to.
Text on the Page
You can obviously fool Google by telling it the image is “Red Sports Car Driving on a Racetrack” when really it is a photo about something else. So Google takes into account the text that surrounds the image on the page. If you have a bunch of racecar photos on one page, don’t depend on just the alt text to get you ranked, you will need text on the page as well that talks about race-car stuff too.
Image Captions
Use captions for your images wherever possible. This goes back to text on the page helping your images rank. But also, in template systems (like blogs) captions are often used to generate the alt text as well.
Social Tools like Flickr
In addition to posting images to your website, you may more easily be able to rank in search engines by posting to social sites like Flickr or Picassa. Search engines index these photo sites often (look at these sites very frequently for updates) so you have a good chance of ranking quickly and they often have more search power than your own site. Flickr also has built in labeling that helps Google understand what your images are about. Bottom line: post images to multiple places, but remember to brand your social portals so that searchers can contact you if they like your photos.
Next Step in SEO
Nobody has more images than photographers, so if you’re looking for photographer google rank, then check out the Photographer’s SEO Book.
- Zach
Relative Links
I just put together a niche site for myself and scheduled 120 posts over the next few months. Each of these posts is full of unique content and nearly 100% original, not copied and no program was used to re-write the posts before scheduling them to be published. However what I did fail to do is create relative links within each post in order to improve sitewide search engine optimization and help visitors navigate to relative content.
The reason no relative links were used within the content is because I hired a writer to create all of the content so far and schedule it to be published, not because I didn’t think they were necessary. Creating links relative to the content you’re linking to can take some time and planning but should come naturally. Create your links to content within your site that is relative to the topic you’re trying to present. For example, in this article we are talking about how interlinking can improve search engine optimization and in the first paragraph I created anchor text linking to the category of the site relative that topic.
Internal links help your visitors find relative content while improving your seo score at the same time. Typically it’s a good idea to have the same term mentioned on both the url you’re linking to and the url you’re linking from, that way each of the pages have similar content. When you obtain the proper links from relative content from internal or external pages you will be able to improve your seo and hopefully increase your pageviews at the same time. Make sure to use the proper anchor text when using html hyperlinks and try not to overuse the same exact keyword. Google isn’t stupid and if you spam keywords you can lose ranking or even get sandboxed all together.
Unique Article Wizard Review
This is an older post that was saved as a draft until now. It almost 9 months old but it’s still worth reading. On another note the site was flashy but I had a host data loss issue, whichs sucks bad… always backup your site!
Until recently the only free article directory I’ve used was http://ezinearticles.com/ because of how respected it is and the quality backlinks each article you write provides. I had heard that submitting your article to multiple article directories could have a viral effect that creates hundreds of backlinks but had yet to give it a try. One of my primary concerns has always been duplicate content and how Google views backlinks to my site.
So I talked with a buddy of mine and he flat out told me that I am a dummy for not using Unique Article Wizard already and if I don’t give it a try he’s going to fly out to my house just to slap me in the face! You don’t know my buddy but when he tells you to do something he’s not playing around.
He told me that the web based software uses multiple versions of paragraphs you create to generate unique articles that are automatically submitted to article directories. Your articles are then downloaded from these free directories and webmasters use your articles as content for their site or blog. Usually when they do this they leave your site link intact and this provides you with hundreds of backlinks in a very short time.
So I paid the $67 for 1 month and signed up.
Once I logged in to the members area I was provided with a step-by-step wizard that guided me through the whole process. To begin I write an article 7-10 paragraphs using 2-4 sentences per paragraph and create a bunch of different titles. Once I’d written the original article I had re-write each paragraph using the same message but in different words.
After I was done writing the article and created 3 different versions of each paragraph I moved on to the creation of the about the author box. This is where I added in a link to my site and used a name that would show up easily on Google if I searched for it. I just made up a name, David Curbkenny, and checked to make sure that Google hadn’t indexed any pages for that name.
I set unique article wizard to submit to 50 directories per day, the recommended default setting, and submitted the article. Within a few days I already had 5 pages indexed by Google with a link to my site using the anchor text I had provided in the about the author section.
To find these sites all I had to do is Google “David Curbkenny”.
Use this link: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22david+curbkenny%22&btnG=Search
Unique Article Wizard provided over 250 backlinks to http://madworldwii.com in less than 30 days.
Site: MadWorld Wii
Registered: 11-30-2008
As of 12-30-2008, within 30 days, I have a PageRank3!
- I did do a couple link exchanges but other than that most of my backlinks were created by Unique Article Wizard.
For screenshots and basic use information check out our Unique Article Wizard Review.
-This is a real review and as you can see we use and highly recommend UAW for anyone looking to help them create backlinks.
