Search Engine Optimization helps you increase traffic. Usually webmasters just optimize for Google text only search but optimization for image is also important to get some bonus traffic.

Google has also started integrating other search engine (like Image Search and Google News Search) results into their normal search results. You might sometimes see images related to the search above the normal search results.

Following tips will help you optimize your images for search engines like google:


1. The Alt Attribute

This is the most important factor that affects the google search rankings and will help you get substantially more traffic from Google Image Search. The Image alt attribute is treated as an alternate text which would appear if the image is not loaded. So the alt text should be a brief description of the image.

The Image Html Code is as follows:

<img src = “image link” alt = “Add text Here” />

For Blogger users:

After uploading the image in the post editor, click on the Edit Html Tab and you will see a code like the one below:

<a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”img-link”><img style=”margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 300px;” src=”img-link” alt=” “ id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_” border=”0″ /></a>

Add a brief description of the image in between the quotes.

2. Adding Hyphens to the name:

Always use hyphens while naming your images. For eg. If i name an image: twitter_icons_and_badges.png, the name twitter_icons_and_badges will be considered as a single keyword but if i name it as twitter-icons-and-badges.png, twitter icons and badges will be treated as four different keywords. And so by using hyphens one can use keywords describing the image.

3. Surrounding Text:

The surrounding text is viewed by google as a description about the image. So add relevant text surrounding the image.

Note: Make sure you do not add too many keywords and irrelevant information, because this can be considered as spam.