How To Search Engine Optimize For Google Image Search

After my post earlier today I had a couple questions asking for more detail about SEO for Google Image Search. I Thought I would do a quick post with some quick and easy steps, by no means will I ever claim to be an SEO expert but I do think there are many basic rules you can live by to give yourself a solid chance at success.

Here are the things to look at:

Image File Name - Make sure you name the file based on the keywords you are optimizing for, in other words if the page is about iPhone App Reviews do your keyword research to determine the optimal words to put in file name. The easy way to look at this is it is not much different than the file name for the actual site page.

An example, and Aron will hate me for this (Sorry Aron) but search Google for Aron Meystedt or click here. You will see I rank on the page first based on my file name of the image when I did the interview with Aron.

Also, a little tip that seems to work but if you look around you will see much debate on, is using dashes in a file name rather than running the words together, i.e. Bruce-Marler rather than BruceMarler. I try to use dashes.

Content On Page - The content and surrounding information on the page around the photo is taken into account by Google as well, this will have an effect on how your images rank. In otherwords, do not try to scam Google by ranking high for an image name for Debt Consolidation on a page about iPhones.

Title Tag - The next thing is to make sure you have the title tag set an based on the keywords you are optimizing for, here is an example:

<img src=”http://YourSite.com/Keywords-Here.jpg” alt=”Keyword Focused Description.” title=”Keyword Based Title” />

This is something quick and easy to do and CMS software like Wordpress has a place to insert this text when uploading a picture making it really easy.

Alt Text Tag - You can see in the above example that the "alt" tag is also set based on keywords, this is the text that show if the image does not load or the browser does not support showing images.

Although there is also debate about how much emphasis Google puts on these tags, any extra edge you can get is important. Set them and you may of given yourself just enough juice to move higher.

I hope this helps answer some of the questions. Good luck!