Thread: Image Optimization VS Text Content Optimization

How many of you really focus on image optimization in spite of text content optimization? Some webmasters don't ever care about image optimization because text optimization will give more impact and affect on search engine..

If you do image optimization heavily.. do you make a keyword research regarding the image? is it hard to rank high in search image results? how to win and get your image appear at first page of image results..?


lets discuss it..

I think you should, because each image will link back to your page, if its an image of something taken in real time ie live on tv before the news gets hold of it why not submit it and gain some hits from it

Originally Posted by blackout17

I think you should, because each image will link back to your page, if its an image of something taken in real time ie live on tv before the news gets hold of it why not submit it and gain some hits from it

no doubt about it, but the thing is how you gonna win the competition if you focus on image optimization, how to be top of search image result? do google know the image is originally from you? how google give value and make your image to be top of image result?

Like anything else, the more specific your optimization the more likely to be shown near the top of the results. If you tag a dog picture as 'dog' there will be millions of pictures, if you tag as 'big dog' there will be less competition and if you tag as 'big black dog' there will be less competition still.

Image optimization essential part of SEO. I am getting decent traffic from search engines!

Originally Posted by wink0r

Like anything else, the more specific your optimization the more likely to be shown near the top of the results. If you tag a dog picture as 'dog' there will be millions of pictures, if you tag as 'big dog' there will be less competition and if you tag as 'big black dog' there will be less competition still.

let say i target for big dog, then there are 100 pictures of big dog that appear on image result, how can i make sure my image is top of 5 image that appear from left to right? is that any ranking factor that need to be considered?

I have never really tried to rank a picture on the top row, but my guesses would be to be sure the file name is the keyword search term, bigdog.jpg in this case. The alt text and title should also feature the keyword for which you wish to rank. Then, as long as the content on the page was about dogs - preferably big dogs, I am sure that some bookmarking of the page using 'big dog' as anchor text would do no harm.

---------- Post added 01-26-2012 at 09:32 PM ----------

Added info:

I decided to check the theory. I have a pic on one of my sites that I think I have seen result in some search traffic. I entered some terms in Google and did not see the image. I opened my site and checked what I had used as a title for the image. I put the phrase in Google and the only return under exact was a site like one of those to which the website submitter uses. There was an images tab, so I clicked on it. It had bing image search results. My image was there with my title shown. I repeated the search in bing using my image title and bing returned only the image on my site. Google did not show that image on any of my various searches.

I just went back and checked by my image name. In Google images my image showed up on page 4 with a lot of images that did not include my image file name shown before it. In bing it was third on the top row.

I also looked at my alt text. It had been the first search term that I had entered in Google, and the image was not seen. Again, in bing, it was the third image on the top row.

This just got to be even more strange. I just wanted to check that the site had not been de-indexed. I typed site:xxx.com into the search box to check. I forgot that I was on the images page but the site search turned up 164 images from the site including affiliate images. The site is fairly well indexed by Google and I do see daily search traffic to the blog.

This is not a good test because it is only one site, but the indication is that image optimization works better for bing than Google.

i don't think it is so hard to place your image on top in search engines, so if your content is well optimized you can do this very, i created a Website around 7 months back fully on-page optimized with image using Image alt, title and image caption very well.
and just after 4-5 days i got very huge response for that webpage when i go to Google analytics stats then i find that from where whole traffic come from even whole website getting traffic of 20-30 and that single page 60-70 Visits daily... When i will find then i got to know that my image with "banner" and "banners" keyword is in top 5 of Google Images... That was really Surprising for that time, because till then i have never seen response so fast for such a high competitive keyword.

I really don't focus on the image customization on my professional website, but I try to do my part because I know that the little thing I do can still contribute to the search engine results, and that is exactly what I am after for my business.