Improve Your Google Image Rankings in 10 steps

[Ifirst]

Improving your Google images ranking offers you a fantastic opportunity to rank high in Google SERPS. Due to Google's new universal layout many top ranked images now show up on the first page. There is a huge gap in the market as very few people are effectively utilizing Google images as part of their SEO campaign. So here are the best ways to improve Google image ranking and increase your click through rate. Research shows that as much as 15% of all searches are now image searches, so its time for you to get involved too.

1. In order to improve your Google images ranking you need to focus your keyword consistently throughout your page.

- Keyword in the URL

- Keyword in the image ALT text

- Keyword in the image file name

- Keyword in Page title

- Keyword in the headline before image.

- Keyword in image caption

- Keyword in img-title attribute

- Keyword density on page

Improve Google Images Ranking

2. You want consistent keywords in the title, the alt and the file name so make these 3 all the same or highly similar. When writing your file name, use dashes (-) and not (_), Matt Cutts says Google favors them.

3. Make sure your keyword and synonyms are place in and around your image, this highlights your pages and images relevance to the topic, leading you to rank higher. Remember to keep keyword density high at around 4%, if possible bold, underline and italicize your keywords for extra impact.

4. Use larger images: we suggest 333px x 334px or about 10,000 pixels in size, the higher quality the better.

5. Decide on a logical folder to upload all your photo's too and stick to it, a folder simply titled "photo" or "images" should suffice. Remember Google image bot is a blind user; consider all technical aspects of your photos as they all make a difference.

6. Original picture's rank higher, so if you are copying an image remember to change the size and alter them via Photoshop. Just like duplicate content Google doesn't like duplicate images.

7. Image type; from my experience JPEG files tend to rise highest, however PNG files are also good.

8. The Google Image Bot may only come to crawl your site every six months, so its important that you have lots of internal links highlighting your images on your site, guiding the Google bot round your pages.

9. Back links! If you have some experience in SEO you know the importance of back links. Its important that you can get back links linking to your blog page, preferably with "anchor text" as your keyword.

10. External links: you want to reference high page rank websites in your content: for example, Wikipedia if your page is about animals or Matt Cutts, if your page is on SEO.

Bonus:

11. Get an Image site map, Google offers this facility but so few people actually use it. Any small changes can be beneficial in improving your Google images ranking.

12. Make sure your photos stand out from the crowd. The new Google lay-out means that there can be 1000 photo's on one page- that's a lot of competition.

Improving your Google images ranking will result in a higher CTR percentage, but will probably result in a lower conversion rate as people who click through images are not as willing to buy. Although the percentage of image searches is now substantial, is debated weather it is as high as 15%, many SEO experts feel that images are still an extremely marginally searched component. At the end of the day to get the complete SEO package images need to play some sort of role, with some small changes & following these rules you will increase your image rankings.

Ifirst Reviewed by Ifirst on 30th Sep 2012. Improve Your Google Image Rankings in 10 steps Improving your Google images ranking offers you a fantastic opportunity to rank high in Google SERPS. Due to Google's new universal layout many top ranked images now show up on the first page. There is a huge gap in the market as very few people are effectively utilizing Google images as part of their SEO campaign. So here are the best ways to improve Google image ranking and increase your click through rate. Research shows that as much as 15% of all searches are now image searches, so its time Rating: 5

[Austin80ss]

Pretty nice guide, I like it.
For Google SE trast range: videos > images > text, but if you need quality traffic - it's better to use text links.

[Phil CmfrtHst]

Bonus:

12. Make sure your photos stand out from the crowd. The new Google lay-out means that there can be 1000 photo's on one page- that's a lot of competition.

12b. However, I would not substitute Quality over Standing-Out-of-the-Crowd. If you are making imagery to a high standard, you need not worry about the competition so much.

- good list of points to consider, thanks.

[ge0]

nice work ...

[BaqarNaqvi]

Pretty nice guide!

[torrfriend]

really nice guide

[stephenj141]

@Ifirst: You mean to suggest like insert keywords more time where you got chance to insert it. Keyword insertion should be like in natural way don't do keyword stuffing which will harmful to your website.