Image Search Optimization is not the same as how website is being optimized, so the methods are actually very different. If you were to search under Google Images, for me i used "Steve Jobs" and a list of pictures that is relevant to the keyword "Steve Jobs" shows up.
Notice the highlighted red lines, non of the 3 sites that has a picture of him which is optimized by the editors are owned by Steve Jobs and yet they could rank better in Google image search. Why is that so? We move on to another example, this time around we talk about products instead, the same thing is happening all 3 sites that are on the first page of Google Image Search does not have any official canon sites. Why does it happen also to products and shouldn't the official sites be getting more traffic?
Why is my images not in Google Image Search?
There could be a couple of factors as to why your images are not crawled by the image bot,even when you have thousands of images lying in your blog or website.
- Your Website/Blog is not enabled with ' Enhanced image search' . To do this you will need to have Google Webmaster Tools, then go under 'Tools', you can find and you just need to check the box to enable the image search.
- You need to Add "Alt","Title" and "Description" to your Image. With these 3 options tagged on, the image can be crawled and read by the image bot more effectively.
Able to rank on the front page of Google Image Search for a particular keyword is surely what everyone wants, so here are the techniques which you can apply:
Describe your Image
The file description of your image is important, try to have relevant keywords in your image file. Change Image File name from DSC_01.JPG to Steve-Jobs-and apple-iphone.JPG.
Alt Tag & Title Attributed TAG on IMG
< img src="this-is-my-blog.jpg" alt="my blog has keywords" title="this is my blog with keywords" width="300" height="300"/>
Blending with the Surrounding
After you have described and given the tags on your image, you can blend the image within your content by floating the image on the left or right.( "float:left;" "float:right;") If your main post area does not have the capacity to do that, then post the image and write a short blurb describing the image below it.
While images crawled into image search engine will help increase your traffic, it may also increase the use of bandwidth when others start to hotlink your images onto their blog. You may want to source for alternatives to host your images if your host does not have the capacity.
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8 Responses to "How to Optimize your Blog Images for Google Image Search"
It was an informative article on image optimization..great!
October 13, 2007 9:46 PM
I have been using those methods and it works very well to get it optimized and in google image search..there is no requirement to enable them on your webmaster tools, it will be crawled..
October 16, 2007 1:34 PM
Thanks for the info. I've been naming my pictures with keywords, and using alt and title tags, but I haven't seen any traffic coming in yet from Google images. I just went into the Google Webmaster tools and enabled 'enhanced image search' so hopefully that will work for me!
October 16, 2007 1:43 PM
Hi jeni, it worked for me so i hope it does work on your blog as well for the image, cause it is also a great source of traffic..
October 17, 2007 9:20 PM
Guess which participant will give you the best return for your comment effort.
Table of Link Values of participants
Just a quick survey of how many links on each participants article page.
It will eventually be an article but I thought you would like to see the table. I was amazed!
October 20, 2007 2:04 PM
Thank you for your article which I linked in from Courtney Tuttle's writing project. I use a photo with just about every blog and never even thought about having the photos crawled. The explination is excellent, so I'm book marking it so I can make sure I do it correctly.
Nick
October 20, 2007 2:49 PM
no problem nick! hope the methods with get your photos crawled and work better in getting more traffic.
September 11, 2008 4:32 PM
Dear Sir
How To Add imgsrc and discription in blogger images pls help
my website is www.arabvdo.com and i post 1000 of photos a day but not a single photo in google image search
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