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SEO 101 Using Images

By Dwayne Goerges of www.topwebsitetips.com

While it may seem that the topic of images is more of a website design topic, in reality the proper use of images can also have a large impact on SEO as well. Questions like: Can the use of images really improve my website traffic? Can I use images I find on the internet on my site? And How do you SEO an image? Come to mind. Let’s go over these one by one.

Can the use of images really improve my website traffic? Following a few basic steps can have a dramatic effect on your websites traffic. While that statement may seem like an exaggeration used to make this article look important, let me assure you, it is possible to have a large increase in visitors by applying these principles. I have sites that receive several thousand unique visitors each week from the images alone.

So, show me this magic traffic making tip, you say. Well, it’s not really magic. As you already have seen if you do any of your own searches, Google and the other search engines like to place image thumbnails and videos on the front page of the results. Many sites, especially the automated sites have a tendency to be a bit lazy with the way they handle images. Don’t follow in their poor example.

While following these steps will not guarantee you to be on the front page it will greatly increase your chances, do it enough and will find some winners!

Do these for every page of your site that you can make it fit; obviously this will not work on all pages of all sites. Try to fit it in nicely with your content.

1) Look for pages on your site that when you do a search with your main keywords Google displays images in the results. These are likely to be keyword phrases that you could never reach in the normal search results (but hopefully you can with the images).
2) Go to Istock or other stock image sites and look for an image that would catch the attention of people, make sure that it also looks intriguing as a small thumbnail. The goal here is to find images that people are going to want to click on to see the full sized image.
3) Add the image to your page; it should be the first actual image on the page (header images don’t count). I get the best results from images that are square or a 2/3 rectangle (i.e. 200px width x 300px height or 300px width x 200px height, we are talking about the aspect ratio here). Either Height or Width should be over 350px but preferably 500 - 600px (with the other dimension fitting the 2/3 aspect ratio). Don’t fret over getting the aspect ratio perfect, that just seems to work the best. Most pictures you download from the stock image sites are already close to that, so you only need to resize them leaving the ratio the same.
4) Add the “alt” attribute to the image call. I’ve noticed that it greatly increases the chance of your image getting chosen if you put nothing but that keyword phrase in the image alt. Do not use that keyword phrase for other images on the page, only the one.
5) Be sure to add the correct Height and Width attributes to the image call.
6) Wash, rinse, repeat…. The more pages you do this to, the more likely you are going to score on a front page image.

Does this bring traffic? My stats package shows when I get visitors from these image clicks, some of my pages get thousands of visits a week from them just from the image clicks (not counting the usual serp traffic).

Do they convert? Harder to say, but I know that when I am looking to buy something online, I like to see a good image of what I'm buying and I'll likely buy from the place that had the image, ensuring that I get what I want.

Can I use images I find on the internet on my site? As a rule NO! Most images are copy written. They are owned by the person who took the image and put it on his site. Don’t try to steal it from him. If you can’t take the image yourself, go to one to the paid stock image sites, here is a list to try Stock Image Sites. I don’t trust the free ones. Pick a large one like istock it’s worth the peace of mind. You can almost always use the smallest, cheapest, image they offer which will be $1 – 2 dollars.

How do you SEO an image? While touched on in the steps above lets mention them again.
1) Have your keywords in mind before choosing the image.
2) Pick an image based on the keywords.
3) Add those keywords to the Alt tag in the image call.
4) Include the Height and Width attributes to the image call

Do this to all images on your site as basic webpage SEO. In addition, if you are hoping to get it picked up for the image placements on the search engine results make the image a large image.

Bottom Line: That little extra effort you put into the images will pay off in the long run, don’t skimp on this step. While it will not work with every image you add, when it does work it pays for the effort you put in the others.

Contributor's Note

This is the seventh in a series of SEO 101 articles I am writing. I am a 10 year veteran of website building and promotion. These articles outline some of the basic steps I use to promote my clients websites.

PLEASE VISIT THE CONTRIBUTOR'S WEBSITE

Wildnet Technologies
Review of Wildnet Technologies SEO work
www.topwebsitetips.com/seocompanyreviews....aspx

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Your SEO 101 intels are really great Dwayne, and I appreciate your sharing in such detail.
We newbie seniors need to print this out and study it many times.
Keep up the good work.
Best wishes.
Frederick

Thanks
Many SEO companies like to make out SEO as some mystery the average webmaster couldn't understand.

While there are many little details that come with experience, basic SEO is not that difficult it actually makes sense if you're trying to look at it from the search engines point of view.

And hopefully a thousand CLICKs :)

Mrs. Computerfixx Feb 18, 2011 10:12

Thanks adac...your plain language explanations in this series are wonderful, worth the time and definitely more enjoyable to read. You are my HERO! Now, I just have to retain the knowledge and be able to implement them when I need to :)

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