SEO Tip Video #8 - Optimizing Your Pictures

Posted by Pixelhead

As promised in the last SEO Tip Video, here is the SEO Tip for optimizing your pics. If you are just into hosting your pics and don’t care about traffic, then this does not pertain to you. I have actually gotten a lot of traffic due to certain photos, so tweaking your pics could generate some decent traffic.

SEO Tip Video Summary

Two primary things that you should use are alt tags and title tags. Use them both, but make them the same.
No keyword stuffing in alt tags and title tags.
Have a picture for each of your keywords, to include plurals and different versions of the keyword.
What ever the picture is of, try to make that the title and the alt tag.

Using Flickr

When using Flickr, put keywords in title, and in the tags. Use the tags.
Write a good description and feel free to put a link into the description, but put the link within the first couple of lines of the photo description.
Add the photo to related groups to increase exposure.

I was just reading a post by Wayne, Using HTML to define an image, which kind of parallels this post. If you have no idea what an alt tag or title tag is or what the code looks like for them, check out Wayne’s post.

Alt Tags and Title Tags

The primary purpose for Alt tags is that when a visitor drags their cursor over the photo, the text that you put into the alt tag will appear in a little box while the visitors cursor hovers over the photo. It also allows those who are visually impaired to know that their is a photo of some widget or another on the page..that’s why you want your alt tags to be accurate.

Title tags give a title to the picture that is only important to the search engines. Do your visitors really care what title a picture has? No not at all.

To see the title and alt tag of the picture to the left hover over it with your mouse first to see the alt tag, right click on the picture, and scroll down to properties to see all the information for the photo that I have given including both alt tag and title tag as well as a bit of other info. And no, I didn’t optimize this photo with good keywords, just me with a glass of pond water.

Adding photos that use these tags, will give your pages a bit more information for the search engines, and adding pictures in general will help to liven up your pages.

Do you use these types of tags for your photos for SEO purposes?

Other SEO Tip Video Posts

Written by Pixelhead on October 26th, 2008 with 30 comments.
Read more articles on SEO

How to write articles - To Build Links for Internet Marketers (June 25th, 2009)
Swag from SES NY (May 19th, 2009)
SEO Tip Video - Optimize for Local Search (April 22nd, 2009)
On-Page Optimization - SEO Training (February 27th, 2009)
Keyword List Prioritizing - SEO Training (February 17th, 2009)

30 comments

Read the comments left by other users below, or:

Joey Logano
#1. October 26th, 2008, at 2:21 PM.

Yes I use the tittle tag. But I have a question.

What is the difference between the tittle tag and the alt tag? I always use the tittle tag, but I wonder if I am wrong to use the tittle tag, which is the best? Or does it even matter?

Thank you!

Pixelhead
#2. October 27th, 2008, at 12:59 AM.

Joey, I like to use both. The alt tag provides the text that appears when you hover over the image. The title is what is seen by the search engines. If I had to choose between the two, and I were more concerned with the search engines I would use the title tag.

Joel Drapper
#3. October 27th, 2008, at 11:59 AM.

Is the alt text the same as the anchor text if the image is a link?

Nicole Price
#4. October 27th, 2008, at 1:37 PM.

This post is very instructive and I shall start using both the tags in my posts. As you probably have noticed, I upload a lot of pictures and this will be of great help. Thank you.

recycling bin
#5. October 27th, 2008, at 2:22 PM.

I used to worry about the alt and title tags just for seo puposes of getting key phrases on my site more using the pics tags. But now with Google having their handy image search I actually find people find my site via pictures now.

Pixelhead
#6. October 27th, 2008, at 2:46 PM.

Joel, no its not the same as anchor text since it is an image. Hence why text links are so much better than image links(banner links). But as Recycling Bin has stated, when you put these tags into your picture code, you are telling them that the picture is a type of widget, which will hopefully get picked up by Google and will show up in their image search.
Joel, thanks for stopping in and keep up the great work you are doing on your blog.

Tertius
#7. October 27th, 2008, at 3:08 PM.

On that I have another question. I’ve done a post on ALT tags on my blog before.

But surely the SEs don’t just check the title? And how heavy is this weighted? Agreed, every little bit helps, not arguing with that.

Suz
#8. October 27th, 2008, at 3:22 PM.

I have a tendency to be lazy when it comes to using tags correctly, thanks for the reminder. I never knew that the alt tags were what the visually impaired voice-prompt computers read, but that makes sense. I’m going to have to be more diligent!

Nutri
#9. October 27th, 2008, at 4:08 PM.

Hey thanks for the tips.

I recently started using images in 99% of my posts but not really been using them to my advantage. I think I will try and at least get the tags in every time.

Hopefully it will get me a few more organic results.

Cheers.

Pixelhead
#10. October 27th, 2008, at 5:03 PM.

Teritus, they are not hugely important…but as you said every bit helps.

Paul
#11. October 27th, 2008, at 6:50 PM.

We have found that image searches to get you traffic! These are great tips I didn’t know that you were suppose to use the same title and tag? I will have to make sure we are doing that thanks for the tip!

Ben Forest
#12. October 27th, 2008, at 10:51 PM.

Yeah for me, putting the url of a site I want to promote in the corner of an image I’m going to spread out is good in terms of getting traffic.

Basic Money
#13. October 28th, 2008, at 4:16 AM.

It’s quite surprising how many people forget to include the Title tag in their image pics. Not only does it offer a benefit to SEO but as you say, it guides your visitors as to what your picture is.

Phil
#14. October 28th, 2008, at 12:22 PM.

I agree everything helps, I tend to use both title and tag and then try to reflect the keywords I use in the main copy.

Movies
#15. October 28th, 2008, at 2:16 PM.

Thank you for your trips. But how can i monetize pics traffic?

Neck lanyards
#16. October 28th, 2008, at 2:33 PM.

This is one of those tips that shouldn’t need to be tip! It’s a basic on-page rule, but thanks for reminding those seo scrubs!

Pixelhead
#17. October 28th, 2008, at 3:14 PM.

Movies, get them to your site any way you can…have great content with tremendous headlines that keeps them on your site after they get there.
Many advertising programs require a certain amount of traffic…some of which could come from your indexed pictures.

Roger Hamilton
#18. October 28th, 2008, at 3:49 PM.

Hmm I think I totally forgot about this! Thanks for the reminder!

Kids GPS
#19. October 28th, 2008, at 11:10 PM.

I seem to be a little bit confused. When I looked at the example that you gave in your post about pond water, when I hovered my mouse over the text I saw the title of the image (”Me with Pond Water by Emperor Anton, on Flickr” - I am using Firefox 3) not the alt text. Is what shows up when you hover over the picture browser specific?

Pixelhead
#20. October 28th, 2008, at 11:32 PM.

Kids GPS, on idea how that got there…hmm

Diet Recipes
#21. October 29th, 2008, at 2:31 AM.

It’s the basics like these that we all need reminding about from time to time. Thanks!

John Henn
#22. October 30th, 2008, at 10:39 AM.

Doing right kind of SEO should Help You Get good amount of traffic without spending a penny.

Minnesota Attorney
#23. November 1st, 2008, at 12:44 PM.

Excellent tips. I had never considered the need to optimize pictures for search engines. Thanks for the excellent post!

SEO Elite Tool
#24. November 2nd, 2008, at 9:15 PM.

am not sure that optimizing your sites images will be of any benefit, as traffic from image search is not targeted and doesn’t convert

Jon Provisi
#25. November 3rd, 2008, at 11:31 AM.

Yes, everyone should take care of image optimization as it can bring a lot of traffic. It is also good to have keyword in text around image in the same paragraph.

Jordan
#26. November 4th, 2008, at 5:44 PM.

These are really great tips. I think people tend to forget the advantages that pictures and videos can bring to SEO. It’s easy to forget or neglect these easy steps, especially when uploading a large batch of images. Thanks for the reminder - I needed it to remind me to be more diligent about this in the future!

Skip Hire
#27. November 5th, 2008, at 12:42 PM.

What is the difference between the tittle tag and the alt tag?

MLM Home Business
#28. November 7th, 2008, at 10:10 AM.

Thank you for this tip. I only used the alt tag so far and never thought about using the title tag too. From now I’ll use the title tag on my images.

Daniel

JBO
#29. November 14th, 2008, at 2:09 PM.

I was always advised that the title tag would not affect SEO. Perhaps i am wrong. I guess it cannot hurt to use them but I understood is was more for the visitors to be able to hover over the image and see what its about.

Marble Host
#30. January 16th, 2009, at 3:47 AM.

It did introduce a unique concept which I didn’t think of for a while. SEO can be used in almost anything that can be published on the web.

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