Friday, December 5, 2008
Google Image Searches can bring as much or more traffic to your site as all other search engines combined. I did a little analysis of my blog for inbound searches recently and found that well over half of my inbound searches have come from Google Image Searches!
Three of the most important things that Google Image Search looks for, in descending order, are:
1. Alt Text
2. File Name
3. Surrounding Text
1. Alt Text
See the earrings above? In Blogger, in Compose mode all you see is the image. But if you click on the Edit Html tab, you will see the following html language:
Notice the alt="" that I highlighted in yellow?
The Alt Text (the part between the quotation marks) can contain keywords describing an image - BUT ONLY IF YOU ADD THEM. Alt Text is the text equivalent for an image, and is used by blind people (and also for other things).
But, importantly, Google uses Alt Text to find images. It's the MOST IMPORTANT element of Image Search Optimization.
How can you add it? Just by putting a description between the quotation marks.
I'll show you how. For this example, let's add the words "sterling silver hoop earrings swirls":
Remember, try to be descriptive with your Alt Text, but don't over do it. The best thing to put here are keywords you personally would search for if you were looking for that image.
2. File Name
Instead of calling your photo file image1234.jpg, rename it to something more descriptive such as sterling-silver-earrings-with-swirls.jpg. Try to keep the File Name either the same, or very similar to the Alt Text. The name of the file for my earrings is silver-hoop-earrings-with-swirls.jpg. The html Image Name for the image is:
Google will use the Image Name as it searches for images.
3. Surrounding Text
Always try and place a paragraph of descriptive text directly above and below your image, with words from your Alt Text and Image Name included in this text.
Google will look for relevance. If it doesn't think your Alt Text and Image Name correspond with your surrounding text, it might ignore your image.
It may take a while for google to crawl through the web and find your site, but you' ll be AMAZED at how many more hits your blog will have if you remember these 3 steps.
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I know I personally use the google image search tons!
I am totally going to link this to my blog if you don't mind!
(Please, go right ahead and link this to your blog.)
Pei Li
Yesterday, I had 60 views from google image searches alone!
also, those earrings are fantastic.
It's funny that there's not this is not something that's widely used. SEO is always talked about, but not this.
I am going to mention your post on my site I am sure there are othere that would love to know about this.
Thanks again.
Welcome to blogging and good luck to you! And thanks for mentioning my post on your site.
-Suzanne
THANK YOU SO MUCH for sharing.
I'm glad you found this helpful and I wish MANY MORE views for your blog.
And thanks for the call out on your blog.
:-)
Well, that will take more than a quick comment to explain. Maybe I need to write about that in a future post.
Thanks tons-shoozles
You're great! Hope you found this useful and get many more views.
Thanks :)
Found you in the Etsy fora :)
-Amanda/PersistentGreen
Help, please. All recommend this program to effectively advertise on the Internet, this is the best program!