Recently, SpiderMarket began ranking for the term Camel Spider for a page that has nothing to do with those giant monster spiders. Alas, I won’t complain. Literally, the traffic is crazy. That post is getting more than 400 hits per day all because the spider picture is ranking. It’s a testament to the power of image search. To be honest, I’ve not always been a fan of image search. It has never netted me really relevant traffic, but there are great uses for it. Think, for example, if my site was all about spiders. If this were a spider wiki and pages were ranking for spiders, then, well, that traffic would be awesome. People would be coming to me to learn about spiders.
Alas, that’s not the case. So, I thought I’d talk a bit about ranking factors for images. Since it’s such a great referrer, and you can leverage image search with relatively little effort…you might as well try.
Image Search Factors
- Use the alt tag – Come on! I know that everyone knows that they are supposed to use this tag, but it seems like no one ever does. I can’t tell you how many sites I see not using alt tags in their images. Who knows how much traffic they’re not getting as a result. Make this descriptive, use good keywords.
- Name your file something that makes sense – File names are part of the image ranking algorithm. Use file names that make sense. So, for example, I’m going to put an image in this post for Black Widow Spiders. I’m going to name the file black-widow-spider.jpg. I’m also going to make my alt alt=”Black Widow Spider”
- Make sure that your post is chock full of good, relevant keywords (don’t stuff them, just sprinkle them in throughout).
- Put a good, descriptive header next to the image – While Google likes keywords, if you put an h2 header right above the image, it seems to really spur google on to rank your image high in the SERPs.
- Google likes keyword match domains. That applies to image search too. My domain is spidermarket. So, I probably have preference for ranking in images about Spiders…Google ain’t perfect. You don’t need an exact match domain though. You can do it even if you don’t. What you do need though is to give google some signals that tell it that your site is about something else. If you have a branded domain without the words that you want to target in your picture (or post for that matter), then you would do well to get some links with good anchor text pointed at you that will tell Google exactly what your site is really about.
There are other factors, but these are good for getting you on your way.
Black Widow Spider
This is the Black Widow Spider picture that I was saying I was going to put into this post. If you go to view source, you’ll see that I used an h2 header tag right above the image for the keywords I want to rank the image for – Black Widow Spider. Inside of the image tag, I have implemented the alt tag Black Widow Spider, and the name of the file targets the keywords as well. Will it work? Let’s wait and see. Maybe one of these days you’ll actually be reading this article because you got here as a result of searching for a picture of black widows.
Image Search Tips
- The big problem with image search is that Google will send users to a page that has just the image on it, and you won’t necessarily even see all the traffic you’re getting. How do you handle that? Well, a bit of javascript’ll do it right up nice for ya’. If you want to redirect image search to your site, rather than to just the image, put the following javascript right in your header:
<!--BEGIN: Redirect images script-->
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"> if (top.location != self.location) top.location.replace(self.location); </script>
<!--END: Redirect images script--> - Never presume that you know what people search for to find images. Always do keyword research to figure out what keyword you should target. I have listed a number of free keyword research tools; use them.
- USE IMAGES EVERYWHERE
Hope that all helps. Now to say goodbye, I present you with a video of two Black Widows mating. Enjoy!
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I actually came here because I searched for a decent picture of a black widow spider.
I came here because I searched for piccs of black widow spiders. But I liked the video too
With all the SEO your pic does not appear on the first 2-3 pages of Google search. Therefore I will say your article is nothing more than guess. Nice try but unfortunately what you have mentioned is something that most people knows and they use it on pictures but it barely works.
@Max, I think you fail to understand how Google Image search works. It’s a different algorithm. Currently, the image on this page is, in fact, on the first page. Don’t believe me? Check it out: http://bit.ly/aKFwSP. Using Google Images for ranking isn’t about getting into the natural organic results. It’s about increasing your rankings in image search for searches that trigger images in the results. If you can get a picture like my black widow spider picture above, ranking in those first few positions, you get to bypass all the organic rankings. So thanks very much for your comment, but all you really did is show your ignorance.
Thanks a lot. I really like the trick of redirecting images to the post when they are searched in search engine.
And what about links to images, is this necessary for image seo?
hey these spiders are amazing but really dangerous so watch out?jkjkjkjkkj
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