Images Are Also Content

Content & Article Writing

Images are also content... especially if your niche is very visual (ex., a travel niche). If your site fits that bill, optimize all images by following these guidelines...

1) File Name:  The page's keyword should be in the image's file name (the exact keyword is best, dashes between each word in a multi-word keyword).

2) Alt Attribute (Alt Text) and Title Attribute:   Use the page's keyword in a brief Alt Text description of what the image is about. Keep it short, but make it descriptive (ex., a photo of the pool at the Cuisinart Hotel might say "Cuisinart Hotel swimming pool").

3) Nearby Text:   The page's keyword should appear in text near the image, either in a headline (if appropriate) or as a (bold) caption directly adjacent to the image, or in the body text as close as possible. Keep it real and don't go overboard -- one use of the keyword somewhere near the image is fine.

4) Page Context:   Google's usual on-page and off-page ranking criteria do count, too, although they seem not as heavily weighted for images. That's likely because an image is more cut and dry -- it's either on the page, or it's not. The "bigger picture" of inbound links and other off-page search engine ranking criteria is not as important in image search.

5) Site Context:  "Entire site relevance analysis" is of less importance than on-page criteria and the image itself, for same reason.

Make sure that your Top 5 keywords are well optimized for image search (i.e., one keyword per image on each page that focuses on the respective keyword).

Image search is much simpler than doing text optimization. Just follow the above guidelines. After that, as you modify an existing page, optimize for image search, too.

Unless you see some powerful potential for your site, don't turn this into a big project. Continue to create new content as usual. That's your best strategy for attracting targeted, free traffic from the search engines.

Bottom line?

You will accomplish much more by creating new content than you will by spontaneously adding images to a site that doesn't require them. Of course, every last bit of traffic does count, so always format any new images properly.