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Image Content
Places Where Image Search Results Appear
• Major search engines - either within blended search or image search
• Photo sharing sites (Flickr, Photobucket)
• Social image sharing sites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter)
Images in Search Results
Web Search Results:
“skin care routine”
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Flikr Search Results:
“oily skin care”
Twitter Search Results :
“skin care products”
Image Content
Third Party Image Hosting Websites
With the popularity of social media and the sharing of information, it is intuitive that
there has been a large increase in the popularity of image hosting and sharing websites.
Flickr (Yahoo!-owned), Photobucket, Picasa Web Albums (Google-owned) and
ImageShack are just a few. These sites give images another chance at ranking in the
search engines and also reach the large volume of people visiting these sites directly.
The example below shows how Urban Outfitters users Flirckr effectively. For examples
on non-brand driven uses of Flickr, see the next slide.
Flickr Incoming Traffic
Percent of Traffic
Yahoo! U.S. Image Search
26.9%
Google Image Search
16.2%
According to comScore,
almost half of Flickr’s
November traffic came from
vertical search in Yahoo! and
Google.
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Onsite Image Optimization
When optimizing images for search, focus on high-level, priority images on high-traffic pages –
using the theme of the page as the focus keyword for the image. Implementing the following best
practices will increase the possibility of images ranking organically.
Onsite Image Best Practices
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Image URLs – Create an individual, optimized host Web page for each image
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The host Web page URL should be keyword phrase-rich (e.g., widgets.com/images/best-widgets.jpg)
Optimized Content – Include keyword phrase-rich, text-based content that describes the theme of the image on the
host Web page. Only focus on one keyword, if following the URL example, the content should be optimized for the keyword
“best widgets.”
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File Format – Save all files as .jpg.
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Meta Data – Include keyword phrase-rich meta data on each individual image host URL. Example: Best Widgets | Great
Deals from Widgets.com
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ALT Tags – Use keyword-rich ALT tags for all images located on your site.
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For example, implement the ALT tag “best widgets” for the image on the Best Widgets page
File Name – Use the priority keyword phrase in the image file name.
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Ex. Best-widgets.jpg
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Keyword Placement - Place the priority keyword phrase towards the beginning of the file name.
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File Size – Ensure all high-level, priority images have a dimension of over 400 pixels.
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Linking – Use the priority keyword phrase as the anchor text for all links pointing to the image.
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Offsite Image Optimization
Similar to submitting videos to third-party sites, when submitting images to sites like Flickr and
Photobucket it is important to understand what users are looking for within specific categories
when they search. Below are best practices for submitting images to third-party sites.
Offsite Image Submission Best Practices
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Title & Descriptions – Incorporate keyword phrase-rich titles and detailed descriptions
of each image submitted.
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Tags – Include keyword phrase-rich tags for each image submitted.
• The more accurate the tags are to the theme of the image, the easier it is for users
to find what they are looking for.
• Flickr has a 75 tag maximum per image.
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File Format – Save all files as .jpg.
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Website Guidelines - Follow the guidelines of each file sharing website
• Flikr has limits on image file size unless utilizing a pro account (paid account)
• The largest an image can be is 500 pixels
• Pro account holders can use the original size of the image
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Digital Asset Review
By leveraging images, one site could potentially gain incremental organic rankings, and
therefore traffic, from images appearing alongside search results in the major search engines
as well as from vertical search (Google Image Search).
Image Asset Optimization
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On-Site Optimization
• Implement keyword phrase-rich images, image host URLs, and image host
URL meta data.
• Include text-based, keyword phrase-rich content that describes the image –
Saved as a .jpg.
• Include the keyword phrase in the image file name and ALT tag.
• Ensure all high-level, priority images have a dimension of over 400 pixels.
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Off-Site Optimization
• Incorporate keyword phrase-rich titles, descriptions, and tags for each image.
• Follow guidelines set by each file sharing website.
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Other Considerations
Optimize Images for Search Engines
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Keywords in ALT text, text around the image, image name, page title;
Preferred image formatting – jpg;
Separate SE accessible image folder;
Image freshness. (SEW suggests re-uploading your images to keep them fresh);
Enabled image search option at Google webmaster tool.
Reasonable image file size
Limited number of images per page;
Popular and reliable photo sharing hosting (e.g. Flickr is reported to help in Yahoo! image optimization).
Optimize Images for People
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People pay more attention to a clear image where they can see details (choose high quality images).
(Clean, clear) faces in an image get more eye fixation. (don’t use abstract images too often).
Keep them relevant: images are not the first thing a visitor sees on a web page but they can compel
him to stay (according to the eye-tracking research web text is prior to images; when looking at a
printed article people see images first; with web page they see text first – nevertheless images make
the visitor stay and remember the page via relevant associations).
Gender specific:
• Women are better at recognizing facial emotions than men
• Men seem to be more likely than women to first look at faces first
• Women are more interested in images with more than one person
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