The importance of images in internet marketing

November 05, 2007
The importance of images in internet marketing
A very significant area of search engine optimization (SEO) and internet marketing that is often underestimated is the usage of tags, names, and locations for images on websites. Perhaps the main reason why images are rarely optimized for search engines is the fact that they cannot be read and most SEO professionals concentrate their efforts in text strings. However, when a search engine bot is browsing your website it is reading all the HTML content along with folder paths, file names, meta-tags, etc. Since most websites contain a fair amount of images that make their layouts and structures, the implementation of simple image tips can make a difference in internet marketing results.

In order of importance we will begin with the alt text variable that should be attached to each image on the website, even if the image is part of a table or background for the website. The alt text is the main way search engines can tell what the image is about. This feature is also used when images are blocked and the browser is navigating using text only. By using alt text in your images users will see a description (use key terms for the website) of the image when they position their mouse over the image. We always suggest keeping the text strings in alt text to less than 10 words. The purpose of this is to increase the key terms percentage amount that is determined by search engines. This percentage tells the engines how much information a website has on a specific key term.

The second tip that should be implemented is the way image files are named. If you know that certain key terms yield better results for the website or if the key terms for SEO have already been determined, then it is to your advantage to name the images using a pre-fix with the key terms that you are targeting. The file name will be read by the search engines and the ratio of content to key terms is consequently increased.

File paths should be created, whenever possible, with key terms of the website in mind. Select the main key term and create a folder with that text string then place all the images in that folder. Basically, every time a webpage is called it will require the reading of multiple images that are located in the optimized folder.

Along with better placing in website organic results, search engines will also use the optimized information from the images (described above) to serve results on the images area of their own website. Even though this area is not used as much as the regular web search area, it will drive more traffic to your website.