Although Google’s mechanism in ranking website is well-known, little is known about its image ranking algorithms. But if your image manages to stealth visibility in the image search results of Google, Yahoo or MSN, it can offer traffic to your website. It is this advantage of image optimization that website owners struggle hard to optimize their images for good ranking in image search. For instance, if you try the word ‘google’ in Google search box, none of the resultant images is from Google website. While, there are some proven techniques to do it, most of the effort is guided by speculations.
However, it cannot be denied that number of small seo companies and independent professionals have been successful in optimizing their images. Gallery-webmasters are also taking recourse to certain techniques to optimize their pictures. Interestingly, the key principle to optimize images is based on content optimization techniques. It will be clear in the following discussion on the different practices in image optimization.
Use of descriptive file name: As Google’s eyes are open to content only, try to use a file name that is a little descriptive. The default camera filename of a picture is generally small such as IMG_245.jpg. But if the filename is a little descriptive like ‘low-price-furniture-emarket.jpg’, it has a greater chance of visibility.
Use a longer description in the ALT and TITLE tags: When you are writing the script, the coding for images must be done carefully. Give a brief description of the images in about seven to eight words under the Image tags, ALT tags and TITLE tags.
Caption-type description of images: Apart from using descriptions in the coding, put a two-line description of the image just beneath it in a way a caption is generally attached. It is because of this text that your graphics will be singled out by Google and get visibility. You can also put the image at the center of the page with texts all around it.
Put image alongside text: The design of your image may not permit using float text. In that case you have to ensure that the images are placed next to the texts that describe them.
Place the image at the top: It has been deduced from experienced that if an image is placed at the top of a page, it stands a greater chance of visibility than the one placed at the bottom.
Use of meta tags: In case of developing image gallery, where the developer has no scope for using image description, title and meta tags can be utilized for posting information.
These are some of the techniques that web masters are used to. Sometimes images are hot-linked to allow visitors direct access to another page. But this will take up a significant portion of the bandwidth. One can also consider using keywords in image name, in the surrounding texts and alt-texts. Keywords are used in the URL too. Moreover, if the image size is between 320 pixels and 1280 pixels, it will be conducive of its optimization.
