Google Image Optimization

Nusuni.com currently gets almost 70% more Google Image traffic than Google search traffic. Do you know why? It’s a simple thing called Google Image optimization.

Google Image search can be a useful ally for getting blog traffic if you optimize your images for it. About a year ago I posted some images which were about something very specific (a game), so I optimized the alt attribute and named the images accordingly. Since then I have received thousands of hits from Google Images.

Just like with regular SEO, you should not expect to get highly ranked for a very general phrase. You should really niche down your keywords.

There are two things that I think make up roughly 95% of the “search juice” for image search, the alt attribute and your image’s name (and URL). At least those are the two items that have given me the best results when optimized correctly.

So you might be wondering, what is a good example of an optimized image? Well here is a quick example.

Image Name: snow_back_deck.jpg
Alt: Snow on our back deck of our upstate New York house - January 2007

Instead of the photo being named “photo1.jpg” I named it snow_back_deck.jpg. It is more specific, and helps describe what the image is about. The alternate text is also very specific, it lists the location, the focus of the photo, and a rough date of when it was taken.

So if someone were to search for “January 2007 snow storm” it may come up with that image (note: when I used that image originally I didn’t properly optimize it, my bad)

One thing that you should remember is that unlike web pages, images (in my own experience, at least) tend to take much longer, like 6+ months, to get put into Google Images. Your experience may be much different.

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