Google images can really drive traffic to your blog or website. There are many factors that go into indexing images and a few of them are fairly easy to do. Here are a couple things to keep in mind. We’ll use one of my Photographs of a bride from a wedding I shot in Las Caletas, Puerto Vallarta as an example.
Bride standing on the rocks of Las Caletas, Puerto Vallarta on her Wedding Day
Descriptive Text and Captions
– Use descriptive text around the photo in the content of your blog post or website as well as around the image in the HTML code. You can see that I have done that above in saying:
“We’ll use one of my Photographs of a bride from a wedding I shot in Las Caletas, Puerto Vallarta as an example.”
as well as with the caption underneath.
Image Titles
Be sure to title your images properly. A good example would use relevant keywords describing the image such as: “Las-Caletas-Puerto-Vallarta-Wedding-Photo.jpg” as opposed to a bad one such as: “retouch_001.jpg”
Alternate Text
Using alternate text is also important for search engines. Once again you should use relevant descriptive text. Don’t make it too long though.
<img src=“Las-Caletas-Puerto-Vallarta-Wedding-Photo.jpg” alt=”Wedding photography Las Caletas Puerto Vallarta”/>
While the following example utilizes a relevant keyword, it is too general and lacks descriptive long tail keywords that make it relevant to search engines and in turn web users searching for an image like this.
<img src=“Las-Caletas-Puerto-Vallarta-Wedding-Photo.jpg” alt=”wedding”/>
Anchor Text
When linking to an image be sure to use anchor text to help describe the image as well. Using descriptive anchor text not only lets your readers know that they are going to but also lets search engines further determine the importance and relevance of the image or page you are linking to. Here is a good example of anchor text.
“Check out more of my Las Caletas Wedding Photographs like this one”
But a common example of how not to do this would be.
“For more wedding images of las caletas click here”
Just as a side note, here is an example of how WordPress actually incorporates the Title, Alternate Text, Caption and Description when you upload a photograph into your media library.
There are many other SEO practices you can use to further make your images more prominent on the web. These are just a few. Look at Brent D. Payne’s SEO for Images pdf for more information on other image SEO tips and check out Brent D. Payne’s “The thoughts of a bald SEO guy for more interesting Posts on Search Engine Optimization.
