Jojo’s World

Its a common mistake or a type of avoidal that most SEO people will do, they dont Optimize their site for images. I dunno why this happen always and why many are still not so aware of this great oppurtunity to pump a load of traffic to your website. Optimisaing Images in your site will bring you a load of traffic via search engines. A recent conference conducted by Search Engine Strartegies concurred that “image search is the fastest growing vertical in the search arena today. Statistics from Hitwise show it to achieve 90% growth year after year, with over 360,000,000 searches per month across the top search engines: Google, Yahoo!, Ask, MSN, and AOL. All in the “Big 5″ have a search vertical dedicated specifically to image results, with 3 of them (Google, Yahoo!, MSN) integrating images into some contextual search results.”

How to optimise your images?

Thats the question! How to optimise your images, so that your site/blog gets a good visibility in Search Engines? Answer is simple, only requirement is be aware of certain facts & criterias that Search Engines consider while indexing images.

1. Use JPG format for all your photos & GIF format for all other graphical representations. Search Engines index JPG images a lot more compared to other formats.
2. Use ORIGINAL pictures – always! Upload it to your server, integrate your Logos, Trademarks etc.
3. Naming the Image is a great technique. Name the image in most Search Friendly manner. Eg: If you are writing a post about filmstar Aishwarya Rai or Angelina Jolie, upload an image of same people, then NAME that image like “Angelina Jolie photo” or “Angelina Jolie pic” or just “Angelina Jolie”. Similarly if you are writing a technology article realted to Windows vista, just upload a vista image – after renaming it as “Windows Vista tips” or “Windows vista tweaks” . Use your sense & find out more!
4. TAGS – can do a good help in optimising images. Write the most appropriate TAGS for your images. Eg: If its a post related to Windows vista, use TAGS like “Windows”, “Vista” “Windows Vista” etc.
5. DESCRIPTION:- Write a small (20 to 30 words) description about your topic. It must be relevent or matching with the article you are writing.
6. Including 4 or 5 images of same nature ( i mean related to a single topic) in your article will do good. Search Engines will think you are giving a small gallery of topic. Name all those images related. (Dont use same names for all images)
7. Give an apt TITLE for your image. Title can be same as Image Name itself. No problem but if you can find some other options better!
8. Use THUMBNAIL of the image in your main article & LINK to Larger Image from thumbnail.
9. Always use a good resolution image like 800*600 or more good than that.
10. If you can Optimise the image page – it will also do a lot good. Add some “one liners” small descriptions etc on the image page. More over it will be damn great if you can enable “COMMENTING” option in the image page. All the comments will add to content volume in the image page leading to more optimisation.

Additional Techniques:

1. Add a RATING option for your image. This will increase the interactivity & Search Engines always love User Interactive pages.

2. HOT LINKING your image page is another option. Eg: If you are running a celebrity site, COPY the image page of some filmstar say “Helen Hunt”. Now goto many related forums,blogs etc & LINK to this page from those forums by starting threads, replying to posts, making comments etc. If you are a Technology webmaster or something else, Go & find out Forums,Social medias, Blogs etc related to your TOPIC & LINK back.

3. Increase LINK to this image from your own site. Eg: You are writing an article on Windows Vista – at the end of article LINK to one of your images or to entire gallery with an anchor text like: “VIEW PICTURES OF WINDOWS VISTA” Sure! It will do good.

4. Hot Link from popular image sharing sites like Flickr,imageshack etc.

Its 100% guaranteed that with a good effort in optimising all the images in your site, you can drive an additional 30% traffic from searches alone. Sites related to Entertainment,Celebrities,Photos,Pictures,Wallpapers,Travel Blogs,Tourism etc can get 70% increase in traffic with effective Image optimisation.

A Tip to Bloggers:

Now on ADD a single image atleast in each of your posts (relevant-apt to content) – optimise it according to my above tips and SEE the DIFFERENCE!

COMMENT BELOW IF YOU HAVE MORE TIPS!!