SEO and Images
SEO and Images
Rand Fishkin of +Moz on how to fine tune the SEO for your content images.
Things that Google might use are:
A. The image file name
B. The alt attribute on the image. Another very important reason to add alt attributes, in addition to accessibility reasons, is for Image Search SEO. It does seem to help a little bit, maybe, with web results SEO too.
C. The image caption. So this is something where we've actually seen the caption be more important than the alt attribute when it comes to Image Search. So if you put that little caption down below, underneath your image, that can actually help with the Image Search rankings.
D. Surrounding text content. So Google is going to look at this text above and below and around the images to see if it has relevance.
E. The page title, of course.
F. The page URL that it's hosted on. This is one of the reasons, by the way, that galleries of images, especially inside stock photo galleries, don't tend to do very well, because there's very little sort of relevant content surrounding them. They tend to be in these big, gallery-style layouts. So there are tons of images all in one page, when what Google is looking for is just one or two that are hyper-relevant to the particular topic, which is why most of the images you see doing really well in Google Image Search are the ones that live, not by themselves necessarily, but are the premier image on that particular page.
G. Image engagement and popularity. This is a big one. We have seen results where folks have done tests. They've shown that if you do a search on Google Images and you click the 12th image down and a lot of people start doing that, Google will move it up, just like in the web results, but sometimes even more so with images. We think engagement and popularity, what people scroll to, what they click on, what they click through to, matters quite a bit. That's why you should have a very high-quality, highly interesting, highly relevant image, as well as you also want to serve visitor demand.
H. The image dimensions matter. So if you do a Google Image Search, you will notice that they don't show, or they rarely show, unusual image dimensions. So an image like this, which is very, very horizontal and not very vertical, probably wouldn't do well. Just as a very vertical, not very horizontal one. They tend to look for sort of 16 by 9, 4 by 3, square images, and sometimes turned on their side so vertically it can work, as well. But anything much more than that and you get into problems.
I. Image size. So Google is generally not looking for very small images. They also tend not to show gigantic ones, although they sometimes will scale it down. If you do searches for anything plus "wallpaper," Google knows that the intent is for very large sizes, and so they will show that.
J. Embeds of the image. So if your visual appears on many different websites and pages, and it's been embedded multiple times, that seems to have a positive impact.
K. Traditional web ranking factors on the existing URL. So if this page, architecture.com/santafe, happened to rank well, in the top five or six or seven for "Santa Fe architecture," chances are good that images from that page would also rank in the first few images results. The reverse isn't always true. But if you can get the ranking in web results, you can generally do well in the image results as well. Why wouldn't you want to? Because you can get traffic from both.
L. Google seems to finally have gotten to the point where they have some sophistication, and they're doing a little bit of image relevance and visual match in here too. So if you have a picture of a koala, as adorable as that might be, even if you have every other factor in here, they probably won't show you for "Santa Fe architecture," at least not for long.
Originally shared by Moz
Image SEO is nothing to be trifled with: a whopping 1/3 of all Google searches are performed in Image Search, and more than 12% of web SERPs include an Image Pack. Rand goes all-out in this Whiteboard Friday to share everything you need to know about SEO for visuals, graphics, and photos.
https://moz.com/blog/seo-photos-visuals-graphics-whiteboard-friday?utm_source=google_plus&utm_medium=social&utm_content=seo_photos_visuals_graphics&utm_campaign=whiteboard_friday
Rand Fishkin of +Moz on how to fine tune the SEO for your content images.
Things that Google might use are:
A. The image file name
B. The alt attribute on the image. Another very important reason to add alt attributes, in addition to accessibility reasons, is for Image Search SEO. It does seem to help a little bit, maybe, with web results SEO too.
C. The image caption. So this is something where we've actually seen the caption be more important than the alt attribute when it comes to Image Search. So if you put that little caption down below, underneath your image, that can actually help with the Image Search rankings.
D. Surrounding text content. So Google is going to look at this text above and below and around the images to see if it has relevance.
E. The page title, of course.
F. The page URL that it's hosted on. This is one of the reasons, by the way, that galleries of images, especially inside stock photo galleries, don't tend to do very well, because there's very little sort of relevant content surrounding them. They tend to be in these big, gallery-style layouts. So there are tons of images all in one page, when what Google is looking for is just one or two that are hyper-relevant to the particular topic, which is why most of the images you see doing really well in Google Image Search are the ones that live, not by themselves necessarily, but are the premier image on that particular page.
G. Image engagement and popularity. This is a big one. We have seen results where folks have done tests. They've shown that if you do a search on Google Images and you click the 12th image down and a lot of people start doing that, Google will move it up, just like in the web results, but sometimes even more so with images. We think engagement and popularity, what people scroll to, what they click on, what they click through to, matters quite a bit. That's why you should have a very high-quality, highly interesting, highly relevant image, as well as you also want to serve visitor demand.
H. The image dimensions matter. So if you do a Google Image Search, you will notice that they don't show, or they rarely show, unusual image dimensions. So an image like this, which is very, very horizontal and not very vertical, probably wouldn't do well. Just as a very vertical, not very horizontal one. They tend to look for sort of 16 by 9, 4 by 3, square images, and sometimes turned on their side so vertically it can work, as well. But anything much more than that and you get into problems.
I. Image size. So Google is generally not looking for very small images. They also tend not to show gigantic ones, although they sometimes will scale it down. If you do searches for anything plus "wallpaper," Google knows that the intent is for very large sizes, and so they will show that.
J. Embeds of the image. So if your visual appears on many different websites and pages, and it's been embedded multiple times, that seems to have a positive impact.
K. Traditional web ranking factors on the existing URL. So if this page, architecture.com/santafe, happened to rank well, in the top five or six or seven for "Santa Fe architecture," chances are good that images from that page would also rank in the first few images results. The reverse isn't always true. But if you can get the ranking in web results, you can generally do well in the image results as well. Why wouldn't you want to? Because you can get traffic from both.
L. Google seems to finally have gotten to the point where they have some sophistication, and they're doing a little bit of image relevance and visual match in here too. So if you have a picture of a koala, as adorable as that might be, even if you have every other factor in here, they probably won't show you for "Santa Fe architecture," at least not for long.
Originally shared by Moz
Image SEO is nothing to be trifled with: a whopping 1/3 of all Google searches are performed in Image Search, and more than 12% of web SERPs include an Image Pack. Rand goes all-out in this Whiteboard Friday to share everything you need to know about SEO for visuals, graphics, and photos.
https://moz.com/blog/seo-photos-visuals-graphics-whiteboard-friday?utm_source=google_plus&utm_medium=social&utm_content=seo_photos_visuals_graphics&utm_campaign=whiteboard_friday
So nerdy and so gooood Zara Altair 📝 ✓
ReplyDeleteTanya Lumere [waves] It is. All the points. I appreciated the caption recommendation.:)
ReplyDelete