Image SEO

John Murray +

Most people concentrate their search engine optimization (SEO) strategies on text but it is also important to consider images.

The majority of SEO strategies work based on the fact that search engines are primarily interested in text. They want to show their users interesting content that is relative to the keywords searched. Because of this many businesses don’t pay enough attention to the images on their websites.

Image searches

Whenever you do a search, at the top of the search engine there is the option to search under images rather than websites. In an image search, small copies or thumbnails of relevant images are displayed. If you have great images on your website then these will attract people. If they click on your image it will be displayed in full size and there will also be a link to your website.

Help the search engines

Search engines cannot read images, so they need help in understanding what your images are about. There are several ways in which you can help the search engines obtain this information. Done correctly, your image will rank high in the image searches and also contribute to the overall ranking of your website.
Ways in which you can get your images noticed include:

Image name – your image needs a name that describes what the picture is.

Alternative text – every image should have alternate text which is relevant to the picture subject as well as include keywords that you want the image and its page to be ranked for.

Surrounding text – the text above, below, or to the side of an image should be relevant to the image subject.

Captions – Captions above or below an image helps Google know what the image is about.

Image site map – to help Google index your pages use a sitemap which includes your image locations.

Although high quality text content is vital to a website’s success, it is important not to neglect the importance of images.

John Murray

John is every inch the wordsmith and loves a game of Scrabble above all else. With experience writing for newspapers, John’s time at university was spent studying Creative Writing – something which comes across in his love of the pun.