Image Optimisation
Pictures speak louder than words but what if your high quality, content oriented images cannot be seen by people on the web? Image optimisation is one SEO strategy factor that has been under-rated over a period of time. In the modern era considering image optimisation as un-important is actually giving a free path to your competitor to out rank you for the desired terms.
Here, I am going to discuss few tips and tactics that will help you rank better in Google Image search for your desired key phrases.
Image Name
It seems that the English idiom, ‘Don’t Judge the book by its cover’ does not apply here. Search engine spiders are smart but they are still bots and not real human beings. We all know that a search engine cannot tell what an image is about by just looking at it so, in order to help search engine bots it is highly recommended to add proper image name and folder names
Example: If you have a product Victoria chesterfield sofas, it is better to add image ‘../images/Victoria-chesterfield-sofas.jpg’. You can use the keyword rich name on folders as well if needed.
Image Alt Tag
This one is common and I’m glad that many people are already using it but still I have seen various cases where people are stuffing keywords into an image alt tag. The image alt tag helps search engine bots get better understanding of what your image is about and into which category this picture fits.
The best practice to use image alt tags is to use it in a natural way, for example if you have an image that is about ‘time and attendance’ then it is preferred to add a similar keyword. Adding multiple keywords with commas will not help Google and this might hurt user experience at the end of the day.
Use Prominent Images
Sounds like, bigger the better? It’s something like that. Although no one can prove this as a ranking signal but from the user perspective, using prominent images is a great idea in itself. This sounds logical too because when the user is searching for an image by typing in any keyword, he will probably click the image only when the image is large and of high quality.
Content Around images
I consider this similar to Google's 2010 algorithm update referred to as sentiment analysis to link where bot detect the negativity or positivity of link by tracking the content around the link. Here if the content around the images supports the alt name and image name, there is a possibility that you will rank better for the desired keywords in Google image search.
Images for a website is important and to get maximum benefit out of it one needs to consider image optimisation as a necessary part of their overall SEO strategy.
