SEO Tip: Top 5 Image Search Optimization Tips

Image search optimization especially for the Google search engine requires following standards and some Internet marketing savvy. 

Ever notice that the Google Web Search returns results from its  relevant indexed images especially if the search keyword is a popular name,product, or celebrity?

Here are my Top Five Tips for Image Search Optimization:

1. Use Target Keywords for Filenames
2. Follow File Naming Conventions
3. Don't Forget The IMG Tag Alt Attributes
4. Use Image Captions
5. Use Social Media Sites

Use  Target Keywords for Filenames

First, you need to determine your target keywords.  What are your focus keywords?  You need to perform a keyword research by yourself or hire a professional like an SEO Expert to help you.

The target keywords should be integrated to the image filenames.  Make sure that the names are short,descriptive, and not spammy or Google will notice it.


Follow File Naming Conventions

Website owners usually upload images from their picture folders loaded with images from digital cameras.  These pictures are usually named sequentially by the camera software (e.g. IMG_0001.JPG).   These default names won't help your optimization at all.

You need to rename these files manually to provide more relevant names for each image.  For compound names, it is recommended to use hyphens ("-") as word separators.

For example:

1. ferrari-logo1.jpg
2. apples-red-and-green.jpg
3. steve-jobs-apple.jpg

 Don't Forget The IMG Tag Alt Text

I've seen a lot of website owners and webmasters fail to include the "Alt" attribute text on their websites' IMG tags.  The "Alt" text is used by Google and other search engines for indexing images.  The "Alt" text on each image should be UNIQUE, short, descriptive, and not spammy.


Use Image Captions

Under each website image should be a keyword-rich caption that describes what the picture is all about.  The captions help the search engines in determining the relevancy of the images to the target keywords or key phrases.


Use Social Media Sites

Don't forget the importance of Social Media sites. Use Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and other photo-sharing sites as part of your web visibility efforts.   You can also share the images on top social bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit.  The more varied the websites that host your images, the more Google will give value to these images.



The keyword rankings of these images may take from two to three months to reach the first page on Google's Image Search results.  This will depend mostly on your competitors and your image optimization efforts.

Hope you learned something.