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Optimizing your images for Google and SEO

January 24th, 2010

Image optimization for SEO is something that often gets overlooked in website optimization. There are a number of simple techniques you can apply to your images to make them easier for Google and other search engines to find. Therefore, improving the overall optimization of your website for search.

Use a descriptive naming convention

Let’s say your have 10 images you are building into a gallery. I know it’s tempting to just name them 01.jpg – 10.jpg (I’ve been guilty of it). Although this is a good convention to keep yourself organized, it’s terrible for search. Imagine how many images out there are named 01.jpg or 1.jpg. How is a search engine supposed to tell the difference?

Bad naming conventions:

• 01.jpg
• image1.jpg
• IMG0000021.jpg

The good news is the solution is simple, use a descriptive naming convention. Let’s say you are posting an image of a red Electra cruiser bike to your blog. Resist naming it red-bike.jpg (or something similar), and call it red-electra-cruiser-bike.jpg. Awesome! Now your image is optimized and will be easier to find. It’s also a good idea to use the “-” between each word in your file name. People don’t often search for redelectracruiserbike, they would search for red Electra cruiser bike. Splitting up the words allow you to optimize for keywords that the user has searched for.

Good naming conventions:

• red-electra-cruiser-bike.jpg
• electra-cruiser-bike-red.jpg
• electra-cruiser-bike-model.jpg (where “model” is the model name)

Don’t embed text within images

This is an important one, and it also applies to Flash. Any text that is embed in an image, therefore part of the image, isn’t searchable by search engines. Search engines only have the ability to crawl through the actual text on your website, code, and image alt=”" attribute(s). However, if you don’t have a choice here, make sure you paste the copy (that is part of the image) into the alt=”" description for that particular image.

This practice also holds true for Flash. At this point, I’m not going to get into all the problems for search that Flash has. However, I would recommend that you stay away from using Flash image galleries. All of your images are embedded within one file (.swf) and that makes it impossible to optimize them for search. Instead, I’d recommend you use some jquery for your gallery. Coda Slider is an excellent option that is pretty easy to get up and running.

Insert your images in the proper place

One of the most important things you can do, is to insert your image into your layout and surround it with relevant text. For example, when you’re inserting your red Electra cruiser bike image onto your page, make sure there is a title (above or below) for the bike. Also, include a description of the bike near the image. If you were to place an image of a Kona mountain bike on your Electra cruiser page, your going to be sending conflicting signals to the search engine. You need to keep a clear, consistent delivery of your message to optimize properly.

A few closing tips

Here’s a few quick tips you can use to further optimize your images for search:

• Place your images higher up on the page
• Spur on web designers to link into your pages by using great photos
• Consider creating a stand alone landing page for popular images
• Always specify a width and height for your images!
• Don’t stuff your alt=”" attribute with keywords

Tags: alt, coda-slider, google, html, images, optimization, search-engine, seo