More and more search engines are now offering image search options. These image searches can provide some nice extra traffic. Optimizing your site for image searches can be fast, easy and done correctly very effective.

The first key to optimizing your site for image searches is to determine the proper keywords and keyword phrases to describe your images then placing those keywords in the image ALT tag. This ALT tag will give the image a title. If someone comes to your site with images turned off on the browser or they are on a slower connection they should see these image titles on the page as the page loads. They will also see them when they mouse over the image itself.

When you write the ALT tag for these images you want to make sure your description is accurate and keyword rich. If your site is about surfing and you have a picture of you catching a wave in Hawaii you want to make sure to include the word surfing in the ALT tag. You ALT tag text might read, “Me surfing a big wave in Hawaii.” If you just put, “Me catching a gnarly wave.” You miss out on the main keyword of your site, surfing, and the keyword Hawaii which many people looking for surfing will often be searching for.

Another trick that has less strength with rankings but can help a little in rankings and a lot in getting actual clicks from viewers is the name of the image itself. You will want to use the keywords you are focusing on your site when you name your images and you will want to name them something that people will read and determine as useful. For example you don’t want to just have your image named DCM00948.jpg. Instead name it surfing-in-hawaii.jpg when you add that together with the ALT text mentioned above you now have an image that is well optimized for image search and when found by actual searchers they can see the picture and the title of the picture will show up in bold so they know they are seeing exactly what they are looking for. Here is an example of a well optimized image in html <IMG src=”surfing-in-hawaii.jpg” alt=”Me surfing a big wave in Hawaii”>. As you can see it is something fast and easy to do and can help you get some nice extra traffic.

Contact Got Web Host for your Image Search Engine Optimization needs.