Optimizing Images for Search Engines
Posted by
Shannon
on
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
I really like how simple and yet descriptive Matt Cutts from Google explains optimizing images in the video below. I wish everything about SEO was as simple to explain as the alt tag! For those of you who don't know - Matt is the head guy who understands how Google reads your site and ranks it for the results - he knows the inside variables that make your website search engine friendly. Matt will never hand over the full recipe to success in Google though (as it can open up black hats to cheat the system), but his tips will help you!
Optimizing Images - why?
When you optimize images within your pages with relevant keywords, your website pages are more likely to show higher in the ranks on search engine results pages. The higher your links show up on the results page, the more site traffic you will receive. The kicker is, that you must use relevant keyword terms to what your site and images are all about and terms that potential site visitors or customers would use to search for you.
To complement your overall search engine marketing efforts, you should already be naming the alt tag for every single image on your site. Also to take it further - Matt recommends that you name the image names with keywords that make sense (not "img1234.jpg"). Which I highly recommend as well- it wouldn't hurt!