Search Engine Optimisation With Image Keywords

How to use keywords to improve your Search Engine ranking

You have used a Keyword List to keyword all of your photographs. You are confident that the keywords that you have chosen will be perfect in describing all the important aspects of your images. Your keyworded photographs have been uploaded to your Stock Agency or Image Library. But is there anything else that you could do with those keywords to increase your image coverage, visibility, page-ranking, and sales?

Yes, there certainly is. If you are showing images on your own website, then you can use your chosen image keywords in a number of different ways to:

make your webpages friendlier to Search Engines
help inform them of your image content
improve your global image visibility
return your pages at a higher placing on the search-page

Our task in hand: to display and describe an image on a webpage, and encourage Search Engines to find and promote it. This series of articles explains how to do this.

Search Engine Psychology

We will start by creating a picture in our minds that will help us to understand the Search Engines that we are dealing with. Put simply, a Search Engine is best regarded as a regular person who prefers to read text. He maybe not be the brightest chicken in the coop, but has a better memory than you or I ever will. He expects to see content that is clear and easy to understand, just as if a human was reading it. A Search Engine doesn't like to be tricked or cheated, so don't waste time doing that. He likes you to explain what the page is all about in a straightforward manner, using text that a human can understand. He needs help to identify and understand any images you are using, but provides ways for you to do that. He likes things to be kept in context: write a page about bananas and then include a photo of an owl and the Search Engine will get confused. Whenever the Search Engine gets confused, or you do things that the Search Engine doesn't like, he will take it out on you by lowering your position in the returns, so it makes sense to keep the Search Engine happy at all times.

Where to use your image keywords

Now that we have a better idea of what we are dealing with, we can start to think of how we can use our image keywords to improve the optimisation of the page that displays the image, to better inform the Search Engine of our image content, and thus improve the page-rank that the Search Engine gives us. We do all of this by using our selected keywords in a number of different ways throughout a web page. If used carefully and correctly, they will reinforce the message that our image conveys. Follow the links below to find out how:

How not to use your image keywords

Try to trick or cheat the Search Engine and you are just hurting yourself. Don't get the idea that there is some secret and sneaky way to improve your results. The Search Engines read all of the internet, and have seen all these techniques used many times over. If it doesn't sound and look good to a person, chances are the Search Engine won't like it either. Key tricks NOT to try are listed in the 'Keyword techniques to avoid' page.