Unless you are so totally retro that you eschew all internet images and prefer to live in a cave then you are already including good images on your website. But are you really using them? Not only can well-placed images give a better view of your site, but they can also increase your page views. Open a new search window and perform an image search for any topic. Click through the image to the host page. Were the top images hosted on amazing, high-impact, corporate sites? Nope. More than likely, the images you saw were on a blog somewhere or some personal website. Weird isn’t it? There are things you can do right now to improve your site’s traffic through Google Images Optimization (that is, optimizing your images for Google Images Search). Let’s discuss in detail the answer to the question; Do marketing opportunities exist via Google Images Optimization:
10. Monitor the Number of Indexed Google Images
Monitor how many images on your website are indexed by Google. Check with the search giant and see if you have optimized your images by searching your website in Image Search.
9. Make Your Header and Above the Fold Portion Attractive
This lets your visitors access your page by clicking beside the displayed image on the new page when they find your image through Google Image Search.
Many sites have Google Images Search as their major source of search engine traffic with little Google Images optimization as generally ranking an image is much easier than ranking an article!
8. Use Images About ‘Hot Topics’
When possible (and relevant) use images to catch visitors who are searching for hot topics or trending topics. Use sites like Twitter, Alexa, PopURLs, and Yahoo to see what is trending.
Remember that the more relevant the surrounding text the better your image impact.
7. Make Your Image File Accessible to Search Engines
Be sure that your robots.txt file does not restrict search engines from accessing your image files. Also, try not to use JavaScript links on image files. Doing so could limit search engine access as well.
6. Use Social Site Tags for Your Images
If you are using images with little or no textual content, tag your images using internal tagging or social tags like Technorati.
This may add more weight to your image and help it rank better.
5. Determine Overall Content Relevance Using AdSense
AdSense will tell you what Google thinks about what your page is about. Modify your content until the AdSense unit on the page reflects the keywords you want to target.
This works not just for your images but for your pages as well.
4. Name Images With Descriptive Titles
If you have an image of Teddy Ruxpin, use “teddy-ruxpin.jpg” instead of just using the original file name “b123.jpg”. You can name the images exactly the same way as the alt text. It really makes a difference, wanna see proof?
Just search any keyword in Google Images Search and see for yourself the names of the images that would top the results.
3. Optimize the Page With the Image
Optimizing the actual page will improve the search engine placement of your images as well. Search engines look at the text surrounding an image to determine relevancy.
Therefore, descriptive text with your targeted keywords should be placed immediately before or after the image.
2. Use Keywords For Your Alt Text
Select a relevant (and popular) keyword or phrase to describe your image. This alt text should be inserted in the code for your image file.
If the image is just decorated text, put the text in the alt attribute. After the recent Google Panda update, it is also advised by some experts added words like “image” or “graphic” in the alt text along with your targeted keyword, to avoid any over-optimization penalty.
1. Host Your Own Images
Why would you want to give another website all of your traffic? Yet, every day, businesses and personal websites post linked images instead of hosting themselves. Don’t do that.
You have so much more control when the images are local. Think about it. You can control the file location (keyword-specific folders and subfolders, internal pages, etc.). You can also control everything about the image properties. Do it, especially when tools like SMUSH.IT is available for free that can reduce image sizes to an extreme extent.
These are ten simple steps to use the images on your website as a deliberate part of your online marketing. None of these steps require anything more than a little sweat, equity, and time. However, the work will pay dividends down the line as your site becomes fully optimized. As the web becomes more and more social and image-driven, this is an investment you cannot afford to skimp on.
