How To Optimize Images To Increase Rankings - A Short List
(Page 3 of 4 )
Now, here is a list of things to keep in mind when optimizing for images.
1. Give an appropriate filename for images on your website. If the image is a picture of a green frog. Then name it something like green_frog.gif.
2. If possible, the title of the page should match the keyword. This strengthens the effect of an image to a search engine, and further reinforces what your page is about.
3. Make sure you image is not blocked by a referrer link, JavaScript, or similar. There can be many reasons to use a referring link, but if there is none then do not block the source of an image.
4. Use standard <img src=""> path, instead of JavaScript.
5. Use an appropriate ALT attribute with the keyword in the img tag.
6. Use an appropriate TITLE attribute with the img tag.
7. Text NEAR the image should be appropriate. Text near an image also can tell a search engine more about the images it's indexing. Keep this in mind when writing content or ad copy around your images.
8. Use spaces, hyphens, or underscores in naming your images. This separates keywords, thus making them easier to identify.
9. Where the ALT or TITLE attribute is located in the img tag does not matter. An attribute is an attribute and where is located makes no difference to a screen reader or a search engine.
10. Keep keywords and relevant comments in the ALT and TITLE tags to a minimum. You don't want to get penalized by a search engine for spamming with too many keywords crammed into a tag. Plus doing so will not do much for your either. Use only what it takes to identify the image.
11. Search for your images in Google or AllTheWeb. Do a search with Google's Image search to see if you can locate your images in the search results. The particulars of ranking images are more controllable than websites, so the results should allow you to see changes more clearly.
12. The Red Button - If you do not want your images present in the search engines for what ever reason, then the magic red button to turn them off is using your robots.txt correctly. Put a disallow line to block your /images/ directory from all user-agents or select search engine robots. Likewise, if you are blocking your /images/ directory and can't seem to find you images in Google then may you should remove the disallow line. For more information about robots.txt please visit here: http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/robots.html
Next: Final Note >>
More Search Optimization Articles
More By Benjamin Pfeiffer
