While it’s not always necessary to include images in your posts doing so adds interest and eye appeal. Also when it comes to bringing search engine traffic to blogs, images do that. Even if readers do not like your posts, image searches can bring your blog hits. This post contains tips for SEO of images.
SEO for images
The Google crawler cannot read image scripts and therefore using the ALT attribute (providing a description) will allow you to tell the crawler what the image is referring to. If you want your images to be indexed by the search spiders then give your images the full treatment (TITLE tag, ALT tag Description).
Without a TITLE tag, no ‘hover text’ will show up when the mouse passes over your image. Hover text is a useful way of letting your readers know what’s in a picture.
Without an ALT tag, Google will likely fail to index your images correctly according to the keywords you want, because those key words have not been provided. In other words, if you do not provide a description, you are depriving your images of possible hits that could have come if it had been used and had included key words.
Also note that it takes up to 6 months for Google image search to find your pictures, but it will miss your pictures altogether if you don’t use ALT tags and Title tags correctly.
Additional SEO tips for image optimization
- Surround your image with pertinent text.
- If your image isn’t unique (i.e another instance in Google index), then resize it so it will look different for search engines.
- Use high quality images only and the SERP thumbnail will have a better appearance.
If you are looking for sources of free images for non-commercial use you will find over 100 on my resources page. Please take the time to read the Terms of Use on each site as they differ.
Another Blogger
June 28, 2009
I always want to put an image for every post I made. I already read this image can get more visitors through images search, but always hard for me to make an image for every post. Is the image must related to our post or it can be “whatever” image???
timethief
June 28, 2009
@Another Blogger
I like to put a thumbnail image in most posts. I do try to find and use images related to the posts. If I could go back in time I would have a blog that has the same size of images in all the posts where images have been used. I would also upload all my images into a third part site so if I ever moved my blog there would be no “breaks” in the urls and no need to upload them all one at a time again.
Pearl Trader
June 28, 2009
timethief, Your blog posts on OneCoolSite.Com have always been very informative. Thanks for sharing this latest post for it tells a lot about using images with blog post.
Dear TT that’s why I respect you very much. For you’ve been very co-operative, particularly with new bloggers. Wish you all the best.
Keep up the wonderful job !
timethief
June 28, 2009
@Pear Trader
Thank you so much for your kind words. I’m happy to hear your find value in my posts. Happy blogging. :)
rif-one
June 28, 2009
hello, i always try put image to my post, but should be image always related to post content? or image only attribut to give eye-catching?thx as before
timethief
July 5, 2009
@rif-one
Wherever possible I believe images ought to relate to post content. If they don’t then they are only eye catching in the sense of distracting readers away from the theme in the text.
Bisnis Internet
June 29, 2009
I use SEO Image Plugin in wordpress to automatically using file name as title of the image in blog posting. Keep blogging.
timethief
July 5, 2009
@Bisnis Internet
That’s a great solution for self posted wordpress blogs.
Hicham
June 29, 2009
Thanks so much for the helpful tips, timethief. I am an old fan for the “Placing-Images-with-every-Post Club” if this club exsist because it add more flavor for the subject of the post.
again: congrats on the new look + new avatar :)
timethief
July 5, 2009
@Hicham
Thanks for the feedback and compliment.
RecycleCindy
June 29, 2009
I found your post very useful. I will be adding more alt tags to my photos after reading your post here. BTW – I really like your new avatar. It has a softer and more reflective look about it.
timethief
July 5, 2009
@RecycleCindy
I’m glad to hear you got something from this post as I know you have a lot of images. Thanks for the compliment.
agentpx
June 30, 2009
Good post. No wonder this blog has a page rank of 4. Well, It always my practice to put Image on my blog post on my site: The code of Blogging. But one mistake found out here is I always use the same text for TITLE and ALT, thanks for the tip. :D
timethief
July 5, 2009
@agentpx
You’re welcome and happy blogging.
David
June 30, 2009
Great post – got me thinking.
I make sure to give my jpegs meaningful names. In other words, not 563.jpg but dog-with-bone.jpg.
WordPress then uses that as the alt tag.
And I heard (I think it was from Matt Cutts from Google in one of his video casts) that to assist crawling, one should name an image
dog-with-bone.jpg
rather than
dog_with_bone.jpg
timethief
July 5, 2009
@David
Yes, descriptive names are best for indexing/SEO and underscores in names should be avoided. Thanks for sharing the tips. I appreciate it.
GenuineWoman
June 30, 2009
I always try to put a nice pictures of beautiful ladies on my posts. I am not sure who enjoys looking at them more – readers or myself… =D As well, I noticed that Google brings people to my site because of images.
timethief
July 5, 2009
@genuinewoman
Thanks for reading my post and commenting too.
james oh
June 30, 2009
Dear TT, A picture is always worth more than thousand words, so do the image. You may notice that I have the relevant images at most of my post, if not all.
Word is not precise comparatively to image.So, thanks for your wise thought in this respect.
timethief
July 5, 2009
@James
Thank you for the comment.
Dee
June 30, 2009
I use lots of images and tend to remember to add the alt tag. I have never however heard about Google Image labeler.
Merci beaucoup for the tip.
timethief
July 5, 2009
@Dee
You’re welcome and thanks for letting me know you discovered something new.
TrinitySaij
June 30, 2009
I totally agree. Anytime there isn’t a picture.. I just leave the site and go to the next one that does. A picture is worth a thousand words and I need to be drawn in with those!
These are some great tips that I am going to try to use in my blog! Thank you for posting!
timethief
July 5, 2009
@TrinitySaij
I’m glad to hear you approve of the contents in the post. Happy blogging.
Justin Wright
July 1, 2009
Using pictures is a great way to make your blog a lot more visually appealing. Seeing plain text posts reminds of textbooks from back in middle school. Plus the seo benefits are great.
Kind of funny actually, but I just wrote a post about using pictures is blog posts today and happen to randomly stumble across this post.
Look forward to reading more of your stuff.
timethief
July 5, 2009
@Justin
Thanks so much for reading my post and commenting to. You know what they say about great minds well, I guess ours were in sych.
LM
July 7, 2009
Again, another great piece of information from you. I love reading your blog, you are awesome at what you do. Your tips always turn out to be very valuable. Thanks again for sharing.
timethief
July 9, 2009
@LM
Thanks so much for the compliment. I appreciate it. :)
3D Animation India
July 9, 2009
i agree that images are important part of seo, and now a days importance of “ALT” tag is increasing day by day… Nice post dude..
timethief
July 9, 2009
@D
Thanks for the comment.
Galvin
July 15, 2009
wow this is really helpful ive spend more time finding a good SEO guide, this one is really cool and easy to follow…:)
Weblogian
July 16, 2009
I agree that image bring traffic to our blog. In WordPress, you can use image but hide the image by taking out the image code for better fast loading. You can also hide it in the homepage but show up in single post page. I am doing this at my blog.
withinmotion
July 18, 2009
Awesome Tips! Its good to know that there are people out there that are truly interesting in assisting the blogging community! My company & I always tend to put images since they give high note to what is being said in the post.
alfon
July 24, 2009
i use alt and title tag too this is work nice because i know that it can tell the search engines what the picture is about. beside it good for seo too.. however i’m just a niwbie and i want to learn many thing about wordpress seo and i will bookmark your link for my next visit thanks :)
philtaxation
July 25, 2009
but its really hard sometime to find a related image…Yah, I agree its appealing to the eye when we saw posts with picture…that’s what I am supposed to do, thanks tt.
noor
July 31, 2009
Great post – Just subscribed to your RSS feed.. Thanks
Very interesting post – Might be old new, but it was new to me. Thanks.
Armands
July 27, 2010
Hi,
Thanks for this. I looked into long tail version as well, but not sure how to add that another page and make for images separate page in WP.
Maybe u could give more insight of that. Do u actually use this?
Thanks for post again.
A
timethief
July 27, 2010
Hello there. Yours is not a wordpress.COM blog so the best place to get support for your blog is here > http://wordpress.ORG/support/
Armands
July 28, 2010
thanks for this. will have a look.
a
timethief
July 28, 2010
You’re welcome. :)
ivormorgan
November 29, 2010
Hi
Thanks for all the cool tips. Really helpful!
Just been looking at Google Image Labeller and I can’t see how it lets me specify that I want to label my website.
Guess it’s changed since you wrote this article?
Thanks again!
timethief
November 29, 2010
I’m not clear why you are having difficulty. Maybe you aren’t clear about that site. The site is a practice site for teaching purposes.
I click the link in the post and arrive here > http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/ There I find:
“Welcome to Google Image Labeler, a feature of Google Search that allows you to label images and help improve the quality of Google’s image search results.”
When you upload an image into a post or page on your blog you see the fields listed below. Enter relevant information into them.
Title
Alternate Text
Description
N.B. Captions are optional.
Ivor Morgan
November 30, 2010
Hi
I guess I misunderstood what you meant when you wrote: “Consider using the Google Image Labeler to help Google know what’s your image is about.”
I thought you meant that Google Image Labeller was a tool that would let me label my image.on my blog. Which would have been a dramatic change from the last time I looked at it! Having looked at it again yesterday I see that it hasn’t changed!
Thanks again for all the great content
Best regards
Ivor Morgan
timethief
December 2, 2010
Hi Ivor,
Your’re welcome. Have a happy holiday season. :)