Your Image high on the search engines.

Ranking high on the search engines is like a dream come true to most internet marketers. If you can rank your website higher on the search engines, then you are almost guaranteed with good fortunes and traffic, especially if you rank high on the right keywords. However, the truth is to rank high on search engines is no easy task at all. In fact, not only will you have to please the search engines and your potential traffic, you will have to be able to overcome the obstacles that are known as ‘competition’.

Good keywords are usually crowded with competitors, and thus many people seek for ways to reach the top of the search engine rankings with other alternatives. Some might tell you to write guest post for the websites that appears on the top of the search or some might use Google News to try and siphon traffic from there. Another great way to siphon traffic from the search engines especially Google is to try and rank your images high on the Google Image search. This is a great way to get search engine traffic subtly.

Below are some steps that you can follow to help you rank your images high on the search engines.

Image load Time

The first thing you should be wary of if you wish to rank your images high on the search engines is to make sure that the image loading time is not too long and that the file size is not too big. This is especially true when it comes to Google because they have confirmed this fact themselves about image loading time playing a role in the rankings.

If your file is actually very big, you should consider resizing the file and make it smaller or use a thumbnail to represent the file first. If your thumbnail is able to rank high then that should be more than enough to get people to click through and get to your website.

Image back linking.

There are websites out there that accepts posting of images. When you post your images make sure that you post the image and back link it to your own image. Since backlinks do play a role in helping your site and image rank, try your best to get backlinks to your image. However, you must always keep in mind not to go overboard when it comes to the number of back links.

Always make sure that your backlinks look natural to the search engines and do not spam them. You can also try to find high-ranking sites to post your pictures on for quality backlinking to your images that you wish to rank high. Of course that goes to say that if your backlink comes from relevant or high page rank sites, then you stand a better chance of getting your images ranked.

Image Name

One of the common mistakes that webmasters commit is that they do not rename their pictures properly. Some people get lazy and leave their image name untouched straight from the camera and often times it will look like ‘N82368.jpg’. This is very bad if you want to get your image ranked. Instead, you should name your image properly and if possible, name it as close as it is possible to the keyword that you want your image to get ranked for.

Use hyphens, underscored or a simple full stop sign to tie your name together. For example, if you have a picture of a black keyboard, then you should link it with one of the signs to make it say ‘black-keyboard’. If you leave it as a blank space to separate the words it will automatically show ‘black%20keyboard’ instead. This is the main reason why we use hyphens, underscore or a full stop to replace the blank space. This will make your image name look better, and it is easier to read as well.

Image Title And Alt Text.

Don’t forget to set up your image tile and alt text properly. When you have a good alt-text written you can actually have a good description of the image. This is what is usually seen by the search engine spiders. This is also why you should use the alt-text and write a good relevant description of your image so that the search engine knows what your image is about, and it might even help your site rank higher.
The image title should be clearly written and relevant as well.

Image metadata.

Most images should come with a set of Meta data where it shows you more information about the image such as when the image was created or edited. Inside the metadata space, you should be able to make use of the description column where you can place a relevant description of your images. Be sure to insert the keyword of your choice appropriately to help the search engines identify your images properly and show them that your image is relevant to your site and the search term of your choice.

Follow the above mentioned best practices and you should be able to see some good results with your image ranking and sometimes you might see a difference in your site rankings as well. Of course doing all of the above does not necessary guarantee a high ranking, but it should play an important role to help the search engines value your images highly and place them according to their decisions. If you have a page that has a lot of text, then the images might serve to help your page’s ranking, and if you have a gallery full of pictures, then if just one of your pictures on your gallery rank highly for some keywords, then your gallery might be able to attract more search engine visitors to your site.

Rank your Image high on the search engines.