How to SEO your images for 'long tail' searches

BurgerKing · #1 Mar 28th 2007, 7:36 pm

If you post images to your blog/site then this little tip will give your ‘long tail’ Search Engine rankings a boost. Note: Though this tip is about optimising your images, this will boost your rankings in the normal Google Web Search - not just Image Search.

You should already be adding ‘alt’ and ‘title’ tags to each of your images. This tells the search engines what the picture is about. However the picture information has to compete with all the other content on the page - so why not give the pic it’s own page?

Say, for example, that you have a picture on your page (cartalk.html):

Code:

<img src=’Pics/FERRARI-SCAGLIETTI.jpg’ title=’Black ferrari 612 scaglietti’ alt=’Black ferrari 612 scaglietti’>

Add another page to your site:

Code:

<html>
<head>
<title>Black Ferrari 612 Scaglietti</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Black Ferrari 612 Scaglietti</h1>
<img src=’Pics/FERRARI-SCAGLIETTI.jpg’ title=’Black ferrari 612 scaglietti’ alt=’Black ferrari 612 scaglietti’>
<br>
<a href=’cartalk.html’>Back</a>
</body>
</html>

Save the page as ‘Black-ferrari-612-scaglietti.html’.

Go back to the image on cartalk.html and change it to this:

Code:

<a href=’Black-ferrari-612-scaglietti.html’><img src=’Pics/FERRARI-SCAGLIETTI.jpg’ title=’Black ferrari 612 scaglietti’ alt=’Black ferrari 612 scaglietti’></a>

So what have you done here?

You’ve added a highly-optimised page for the keywords ‘Black ferrari 612 scaglietti’.
Courtesy of the ‘Back’ anchor on the new page, when a visitor finds the new page through the search engines they can easily find the attached content page.
You’ve added more content to your site, and SEs love new content & big sites.

The new highly optimised page is a bit bare, and you might be tempted to ‘wrap’ it in your site’s template - but I’d hold off on that. If you add the same wrapper to all your image pages then you have a good chance of Google thinking that all the image pages are the same (as the image & description HTML will be small compared to the site template). Then you can get canned by the duplicate content filter.

You might also be thinking:

Well, that’s terrific for the search engines, but my site visitors don’t want to keep clicking the images and get basically the same pics back at them.

2 choices

Give them a high-res version of the pic to look at on the optimised image page. Not always possible, so;
Hide the fact that the image is actually a link.

Change

Code:

<a href=’Black-ferrari-612-scaglietti.html’>

to

Code:

<a style=”CURSOR: default” onMouseover=”window.status=”; return true” href=’Black-ferrari-612-scaglietti.html’>

That way when your visitor hovers the mouse over the image the cursor won’t turn into a hand and the status bar won’t show the href location. You could even disable the anchor through javascript if you don’t mind the extra work.

Note: This article is reprinted in full from my blog gathadams.com. Hope you find it useful.

SEOBoy · #2 Mar 28th 2007, 7:39 pm

Nice Article

Its surely useful.

you can find more related article on http://www.pearsonified.com

rcj662 · #3 Mar 28th 2007, 7:43 pm

Good tip. Very good one.

Monty · #4 Mar 28th 2007, 7:45 pm

Just few others tips regarding image optimization :

* Surround your image with pertinent text
* If your image isn't unique (i.e another instance in Google index), resize it, it will look different for SEs
* I would use a title tag different from the alt tag
* Use Google Image Labeler to help Google know what's your image is about (not sure it does help, but it might )
* Use good quality pictures, the SERP thumbnail will look nicer

SEOBoy · #5 Mar 28th 2007, 7:51 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Monty

Just few others tips regarding image optimization :

* Surround your image with pertinent text
* If your image isn't unique (i.e another instance in Google index), resize it, it will look different for SEs
* I would use a title tag different from the alt tag
* Use Google Image Labeler to help Google know what's your image is about (not sure it does help, but it might )
* Use good quality pictures, the SERP thumbnail will look nicer

Great tips, keep 'em coming

BurgerKing · #6 Mar 28th 2007, 7:53 pm

SEOBoy - Cool tips, awesome avatar.

SEOBoy · #7 Mar 28th 2007, 7:55 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Monty

Just few others tips regarding image optimization :

* Surround your image with pertinent text
* If your image isn't unique (i.e another instance in Google index), resize it, it will look different for SEs
* I would use a title tag different from the alt tag
* Use Google Image Labeler to help Google know what's your image is about (not sure it does help, but it might )
* Use good quality pictures, the SERP thumbnail will look nicer

Quote:

Originally Posted by BurgerKing

SEOBoy - Cool tips, awesome avatar.

I guess you are referring Monty

Monty · #8 Mar 28th 2007, 8:05 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by SEOBoy

I would appreciate Green Reps in lieu

Green rep for what ? Quoting my post ?

SEOBoy · #9 Mar 28th 2007, 8:08 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by SEOBoy

Nice Article

Its surely useful.

you can find more related article on http://www.pearsonified.com

the link I guess

Anyways, Monty deserves a Green Rep. I have given all for today. Yours in que

My nick name is Monty too

Someone gave red rep instead....

BurgerKing · #10 Mar 28th 2007, 8:12 pm

Monty - sorry I stuffed up - my comment was meant for you.

mbeharry · #11 Dec 4th 2007, 10:41 am

this post from dosh dosh might help: http://www.doshdosh.com/how-to-optim...-more-traffic/

corlock · #12 Dec 4th 2007, 11:42 am

I've done this to all of my images...and of course, as a result, when I search for them in Google images, they always show ^_^

mark_s · #13 Jun 2nd 2008, 9:22 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by Monty

Just few others tips regarding image optimization :
* Use Google Image Labeler to help Google know what's your image is about (not sure it does help, but it might )

Doesn't that just serve you with completely random images? Or can you actually choose to label your own specific image?

CommonDavid · #14 Jun 2nd 2008, 7:08 pm

Good tip and nice thread hijack

jameskertley · #15 Jun 3rd 2008, 2:36 am

gr8 tips man..thank u....

DareDevils · #16 Oct 4th 2008, 3:23 pm

great tip dude. tnx. hope u`ll get some +rep

Monis · #17 Oct 5th 2008, 12:03 pm

Good tips for images, really DP is the best place to gain knowledge about all SEO.

!Unreal · #18 Oct 5th 2008, 12:08 pm

Great tips there. Thank you

Rasputin · #19 Oct 6th 2008, 12:06 am

well this is a very old post...but sounds like a good idea.
before I set up 1000 files for individual images, does anyone have experience of whether the pages actually get indexed and found with so litle content?
Cheers

dbm009 · #20 Oct 6th 2008, 12:19 am

IMO along with alt text , you should include some kind of SEO headers/descriptions and not just pictures. For instance I had two test sites( affi. sites) one with full descriptions, image pics etc. and one with little content, just images and links. Google did not like my lil. content pics/site and actually banned my ass, lol, oh well i still drive traffic to that site so whatever. But, the other site, with descriptions, h2 Headers, Links, Permalinks, bold keywords etc. etc., ranks very high for thousands of long-tailed products...it hasn't done so great, because it covers various sport niches which are just too competitive, but none the less it has plenty of first page rankings-the site is only 6 weeks old-
The ranking is from the backlinks and the indexing, completely indexed, is from the SEO- it is a highly optimized SEO/doorway/affiliate site

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