Google image search represents the opportunity to have images on your website
displayed in the Google results. An effective SEO is always looking for new
methods to break into search results on the major search engines and generate
the targeted traffic that this bestows on successful sites. Image search does
require a unique perspective to SEO primarily because the search engines do
not have the same textual information to work with when creating their index
and ranking results according to relevancy and popularity.

Image Indexing

Image indexing is a perplexing and slow process. Some sites that witness weekly
visits from the standard Google bots may only receive the very occasional visit
from Google’s image spiders every three to six months. Hitting the ground running
and having your pages set up to really take advantage when the spider does
come crawling is essential.

The Google Image Spider

For the purposes of image SEO you should consider the Google spider to be
essentially blind to your image. It can’t recognise the content of the image
and index accordingly so relies on supporting evidence that you provide with
the image. This supporting content describes the picture and offers alternative
text that is normally used by blind users as well as the Google image spider.
Optimise your site so that it is accessible for all your potential visitors
and you will go some way towards effective SEO for images.

Ways To Optimise Images

There are several ways to offer this supporting text and using all of them
effectively will help your images rank higher:

• The Alt tag is an HTML tag that is designed for the very purpose of providing
  ALTernative text. This text is displayed when the image cannot be viewed
  for whatever reason and is the text that is read out by screen readers. It
  is also the text that the Google spider will read when attempting to index
  an image.
• Save the image to a meaningful path and give it a meaningful file
  name. Include keywords if appropriate but don’t overdo it because SEO for
  images is prone to the same spam penalties as any SEO.
• Text that is placed
  immediately next to or around the image may also be considered when indexing.
  Using relevant images and offering appropriate content in other areas will
  typically lead to the inclusion of keywords around the image.
• The general
  topic of a web page should be relevant to the image and the image relevant
  to the content. Use keywords that bring the different elements of a page
  together into one cohesive unit and all of your SEO efforts will benefit.

SEO For Images

SEO for images, though quite different to standard textual SEO, is a plausible
and beneficial practice that can help drive unique sources of traffic to your
website. However, getting your images indexed and ranked can be slow going
and potentially difficult. Include your most important keyword, where appropriate,
in the ALT tag, description, title, file name, and even in the content around
the image to enjoy the best possible SEO results.

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