Image SEO: 7 Strategies to Optimize Your Images for the Search Engines

There are all kinds of ways to optimize your web site for the search engines, but one of the most overlooked methods is image SEO. It's said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but who knew that image seo, or optimizing your images for search engines, might shoot your site to the top of Google, when all else has failed?

Images can generate a TON of traffic from the search engines, so if you want more of this traffic, you need to use image SEO to land this extra traffic. Fortunately, it’s easier than you think… once you know what to do.

Here are 7 strategies to enhance your image SEO:

1. Image related to content. Be sure that you use a small image (for faster loading times) in .jpg format (preferred format for web sites) and that the image is related to the content in which it is displayed. Nothing is worse than seeing an image of a PC on a site about dog training, for example.

2. Keywords in the file name. In the same fashion that keywords in post and page titles are important, the same holds true for image file names. So, rather than something like "dreamstime_xs_19518144.jpg", which was the original name of the image I used to post this article on my blog, I renamed the image "imageseo.jpg," which is the keyword for which I wanted to rank in the search engines.

3. ALT tags. Unlike text content, search engines can't "read" an image. Consequently, search engines use things like ALT tags, captions, and file names to determine what it is "seeing." ALT tags display alternative text instead of an image if a visitor can't view view the images in her browser. If you hover your mouse over an image and you see text, that's the ALT tags. Using keywords in your ALT tags makes your post or page more relevant to the search engines for that keyword.

4. Title and description attributes. Use a keyword-rich descriptive title text and long description for your image to help provide information about the content of images.

5. Anchor text. Anchor text is the hyper-linked text you see when you link to images with text. Make sure that your anchor text describes the image. If you link to an image using “image” or “photo” that isn't keyword rich, it doesn't' give the search engines enough meaningful information on what the image is about.

6. Surrounding content. The content surrounding the image should be related to all of the strategies you have used to optimize the image described above. When everything matches up, it helps search engines confirm that you are not keyword-spamming and that the image is relevant to the page.

7. Keyword-rich captions. Captions don't count as much as alt tags, but they still have the potential to boost your rankings. Use a descriptive and keyword-rich caption with your image so that it makes sense to both the search engines as well as to your visitors.

Bonus: If you use Wordpress to maintain your sites, a cool little plug-in that makes image SEO easier is SEO Friendly Images. http://www.wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-image/

Start using these tips today to boost your traffic and your search engine rankings. Image SEO is a little-used tactic that can help you get page 1 for your preferred keywords.