Images can help bring more Visitors than Search Engine Hits

OK I hear you thinking what an earth is he on about images bringing more visitors than people coming from keyword searches??? well its very simple but often overlooked

Both Google and Yahoo have a service where you can search for images rather than keyword web searches , many people overlook this as an important opportunity to get there images listed in the image search

You do not have to do anything special to get you images listed just follow my previous posts and make sure you name your images and use the ALT tags with relevant keywords and phrases, again we will use the border collie web site as an example

On a page we have a picture of a border collie ,

The image is called black_white_border_collie.jpg
the Alt tag uses the description black and white border collie

When someone searches the web for black and white border collie your web site might not come up on the first few pages BUT if you search the images for black and white border collie your web site will more than likely come up much earlier

Ok so your pictures are ranked high in google so what? well if you use the image search you will know that as well as looking at the images you have the option to go directly to the actual page that the image is hosted on "YOUR SITE"

You will find some advanced searchers and just curious people will follow on to check out your site if the image they find in google is of interest to them

Its very simple and often overlooked

Image Renaming a Simple rule

Make sure that when you rename the images you dont leave a space in between the words otherwise renaming a image on your pc like this "border collie called ben" will look like this when its displayed on the internet border%collie%called%ben.jpg

This is because the spaces cannot be understood by the browser and so it inserts the % sign obviuosly this is counter productive for helping to increase your search engine ranking and so there are two better ways to rename images to help with this

Either rename with a hypen inbetween each word or use and underscore between each word examples of both are listed below

border-collie-called-ben or border_collie_called_ben

I prefer to use the last option as it can display better isf the image is viewed thorugh a browser independantly of a web page but either will over come the problem discussed above

How Image ALT Tags can improve your SE Rankings

One areathat can have substantial results in improving your rankings within the search engines is the ALT tags on images included in the pages of your web site you will be amazed at the amount of people that forget to use the image ALT tags

Again as per my last post use your relevant keywords in the ALT tags , not only are the ALT tags used by the search engines they are used by surfers that have poor eye sight , by running the mouse pointer over an image on a web page you will see a description of the image thiss what the ALT Tag does

Using the border collie web site theme again if you have a pictures of a border collie called Ben on your site make sure that you use the word "border collie" in the ALT tag , don't go mad using exactly the same keywords over and over for all images on your site , try to mix them up a little but keep them relevant to you website content

The image ALT tags can be very effective in increasing your rankings in the search engines

Using Image File Names to improve your SE Rankings

One area that most people often overlook is images , always name your images with relevant keyword names

For instance if you have a website dedicated to the border collie dog breed then make sure that you name your pictures of any collies on your site with keywords in them

Imagine you have a picture of a lovely black and white border collie called Ben on the page , make sure sure rename the picture something like "border collie called Ben" or "black and white border collie" etc

Don't simply use the name given to the picture by your digital camera as they tend to name them with generic file names for each manufacturer such as Fuji cameras which use the file name DSCF.jpg

Any search engine trawling your web site will come across your images and if you have done your homework correctly by using relevant keyword content etc then it will see you image with the word border collie in the file name and it will find you page more relevant than if it found all you pictures called DSCF001.jpg etc as such file names have no meaning or relevance

Improve your Google Rankings

Keywords in the Title

Yes its is more keyword work that will help you improve your rankings in Google , as in my last post it really does pay to research you keywords very thoroughly

Always have 1 of your keyword in the titles , 2 keywords is even better but dont stuff your title full of keywords 3 is the absolute maximum and make sure that they are relevant to the content of you page , if you simply stuff your title full of keywords that have nothing to do with the content of the page you will be seen as spamming the search engines and your rankings will fall

The golden rule is make sure your content is relevant

Content is King