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How To Optimize Images For Search Engines, Social Media and People

Images For Search Engines, Social Media and People

Optimize your images for search engines:

  • 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 (see the discussion at WW)
  • Limited number of images per page;
  • Popular and reliable photo sharing hosting (e.g. Flickr is reported to help in Yahoo! image optimization).

Optimize your images for social media:

  • (obvious) use really great images to give your readers another reason to spread the word;
  • (to get Digg thumbnailed submission) stick to jpg format and make sure the images can be resized to (or already are) 160×120 or 160×160 pixels (Unless you have an image that can be resized that way Digg will not offer the submitter a thumbnail to go with the post).

Optimize your images for people:

  • 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 (research):
  • men seem to be more likely than women to first look at faces rather than other parts of a nude body (source);
  • women are more interested in images with more than one person (source).

Tools and fun for image optimization:

How to find images online.

Post image: Feeling lucky punk?

Check out more SEO Smarty's posts:

  • 5 Steps To a Smart Internal Site Structure
  • Colorize Your Brand - How Color Builds Your Brand
  • Does Your Blog Have a Flavor?
    1. 21 Responses to “How To Optimize Images For Search Engines, Social Media and People”

    2. Great read. Thanks for the write up Ann.

      By Brian Chappell on Mar 15, 2008

    3. i always thought these are images you see first when entering the site. i didn’t know text is prior to images! very interesting

      By Troj on Mar 16, 2008

    4. Thanks for the great information! [stumbled] :)

      By mark on Mar 16, 2008

    5. @Brian, @Troj, @Mark and everyone - thank you for the thumbs up!

      By Ann Smarty on Mar 17, 2008

    6. Very good posting I really appreciate. According to me the best way is alt tag for promoting images but today I learns other thing is well thanx for shering with us.

      By Unsecured Loans on Mar 17, 2008

    7. thanks for the mention, it’s so nice that know that I thought these are good images.

      By Ethan on Mar 18, 2008

    8. Thanks for the idea.

      By Seo Company India on Mar 19, 2008

    9. Thanks for sharing the tips on how to optimize images for search engines. Very informative Post.
      Bookmarked!

      nhick
      http://www.itrush.com

      By ITrush on Mar 22, 2008

    10. Haven’t done controlled tests yet, but a few more ideas:

      * try hotlinking the images, or even copying to another site (don’t change filename or edit it or md5sum will change)
      * place within same block level HTML elements as keywords
      * use the word “photo” in the alt text

      By Pocket SEO on Mar 23, 2008

    11. Thanks for the idea.

      By Mitesh Patel on Mar 24, 2008

    12. If you have a page which is talkin about famous people them image optimization techniques can be extremely useful and good ranking can drive a lot fo traffic to your site.

      By Affordable Search Engine Optimization on Apr 16, 2008

    1. 10 Trackback(s)

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