Google images can bring as much traffic to your site as google search itself. You just need to take a few important steps to make sure Google has an easy task at indexing them.
- Most importantly enable enhanced image search in google sitemasters tools. Find it under Diagnostics / Tools / Enhanced Image Search
- Give meaningful names to your images.
picture1.jpgwill not do.GreenSeaTurtle.jpgis much better. - Give long description tags to your images. Example:
longdesc="Green sea turtle underwater nature photography". (Thanks Steve for the tip!) - The alt tag should be used for a short description such as
alt="turtle"in case the image doesn’t appear for any reason and because most likely Google uses it to index the images as well. It should however be empty if the image is used purely for decorative purposes. - Upload images as big as possible. Link big size images to the previews used on your site. The bigger the image the more priority is gets.
- The title of the page where your image resides matters. Although you will not be naming your page to optimize for the image, but still good to know.
You can check which images are indexed on your site if you replace creativebits.org with your domain: http://images.google.com/images?q=site:creativebits.org
If your site has not yet been indexed for images — be patient. It may take up to 6 month for them to appear on Google.
Finally, if you have some time help google images to be a better search engine. Play the Image Labeler game. If you are opted into enhanced image search your images will benefit from playing the game too.
