When it comes to the Search Engine Optimization of photos, the content surrounding the photos is as important as the alt attribute in the img src tag. Yes, the alt tag is important, but it’s not the only thing the search engines look at. They also look at the content on the page.

There are really two ways to style a photo - three if you consider putting the photo in an enclosed table or iframe. If that is the case then the content outside of the iframe is less relevant than if the text simply wraps around the photo without an iframe. The same goes for a table.

The two ways, outside of iframes and tables, to style a photo with your web page content is above/below or aside. With above/below, you place the photo below a paragraph of text and above another so that the photo sits between paragraphs on the page with no text beside it. A more visually appealing way to position a photo is with content beside it. To get the wrap around effect with a photo you need to add align=”right” or align=”left” as an attribute within the img src tag. Then you resize the photo with height and width attributes to give the exact effect that you want.

Either way of positioning a photo is acceptable and it doesn’t really matter for optimization purposes. It does matter for visual appearance. But that’s page design, not optimization.

When it comes to optimizing a photo, you need to pay attention to the text above and below, or beside, the photo. What is your web page about? If you are writing about automobiles, for instance, and you include a photo of a Ferrari below a paragraph that uses the word Chevy more than any other and the paragraph below the photo also uses “Chevy” more than other words then search engines will consider the word “Chevy” important. If your web page is indeed optimized for the word Chevy then you probably don’t want a photo of a Ferrari on that page. You can give it an alt tag that uses the word “Chevy” but your human visitors might consider that deceptive, so it’s something to consider.

Be careful not to misunderstand the Search Engine Optimization photo process. Just because your web page is optimized around a particular keyword doesn’t mean that will be the most important word for a specific photo. The paragraphs and sentences nearest to that photo will be weighed much more importantly than the entire page. Your page might be optimized around the word “Chevy,” but if “Chevy” doesn’t appear anywhere near the photo that you are attempting to optimize then it won’t matter. If the word “car” appears three times in the aside paragraph then your photo will likely be optimized for car more than for Chevy even if you use “Chevy” in the alt tag and not “car.” To be sure, content on the page is actually more important than the alt tag. You are a lot better off with no alt tag and highly optimized page content than you are with an alt tag on a page that is not optimized.

The best way to optimize a photo for any page is to match your alt tag with the content that surrounds your photo so that they work together to inform the search engines of the content of the photo. In summary:

• Use a photo that is relevant to your page
• Place your photo near content that uses the keywords you want that photo optimized for
• The content nearest the photo is more important than the entire content on the page
• Alt tags should be used to re-enforce your photo optimization, not define it

Search Engine Optimization for photos isn’t difficult. There is still a long way to go before it is as scientific as onsite and off site content optimization, but there are ways to ensure that the search engines pay closer attention to a photo and it behooves you to pay attention to those.

One of the best blog posts I’ve seen in a long time addressing anchor text links and alt tags is on Aaron Wall’s SEO Book. Quite frankly, I don’t like Aaron’s new tagline. It doesn’t really say much. The “Rank” and “Dominate” are clear enough. It’s the “Learn” part that really bothers me. But it’s his tagline. I think the blog post has a lot to offer and because it’s Aaron Wall, I’m willing to give him the benefit of a doubt:

One of my hobby sites has a fairly flat file structure, and some of the internal pages are somewhat linkworthy. The site was not marketed aggressively and the only sitewide link to the homepage was the logo, which I forgot to put an image alt tag on. Google ranked 2 pages on the site well for the core keyword, but neither of those pages were the homepage. I noticed the lacking image alt tag, fixed it, and within a week my homepage was outranking the other pages.

According to SEOmoz’s Search Engine Ranking factors, alt tags rank moderately high in importance for ranking factors. I agree with that since search engines don’t crawl images. The alt tag is almost the only clue search engines have for ranking images. They do look at surrounding text on the page and page quality factors, etc. But what is missing in the study is the importance of the link title attribute. I went looking for it and couldn’t find it.

That said, I do believe that the title attribute is of some importance, though probably not as important as the image alt tag. An image hot linked to a website with a strong alt tag will likely draw much more mojo than the the title attribute on an anchor text link. However, I don’t see how the hot linked image, no matter how strong the alt tag is, can even come close to strong anchor text, with or without the title attribute. I think the reason the title attribute isn’t as important as the anchor text itself is because the anchor text is so important that the title attribute pales in comparison. Still, I would include the title attribute in every link possible.

According to the same SEOmoz study, bold text with keyword usage is only slightly less important than the alt tag. I disagree with this somewhat. When it comes to search engine optimization, I think bold and italics indicates importance to the page content writer, but that doesn’t always equate to search engine importance, although it may. It depends on the other on-page qualities. Nevertheless, if we use the .3 difference between alt tag importance and bold text importance as a benchmark, I think the difference in importance between alt tags and title attributes is only slightly more than that - maybe a .5 or .6. What that says to me is that, given two web pages that are equivalent in all factors except that one uses an image alt tag with a missing title attribute on the page and the other includes a title attribute but misses the image alt tag then the page that has the alt tag is going to win out, only by a nudge. I don’t know if Aaron would agree with that, but it makes sense to me.

If you are not optimizing your photos then you are missing out on photo searches.  A photo without proper tags is just a slab of useless color on a page that only looks good to your visitors.  Tags help robots and people with screen reading devices make sense of the image. You can keep your alt text simple, but try to make it descriptive enough to give people an idea of what is going on.  A picture might well say a thousand words, but you will have to sum it up in one short sentence.

Another part of photo optimization, though from a design point of view and not a search point of view is the file size.  You have to remember that not everyone in the world has broadband and some countries have very strict bandwidth limits.  As a result of this, I try to keep my file sizes as small as possible.  No one wants to wait five minutes for a page to load.

If you want to have photos on your website then make sure you read these quick tips about photo optimization. They are simple tips, but many people do not consider the benefits of photo optimization. There are a ton of indexed articles out there, most people skimp on image optimization, so it is possible to pick up image search traffic. Optimize your photos, you might be sorry if you don’t.

It’s all in the tags – An untagged photo is a waste of space. Search engines see text not images. Make sure that the ALT text is there and give it a decent description. Use lots of keywords in the description, but be sparing in the title.

Don’t forget the pixel size - If you parameters are not in the tags then you might as well not bother. The size is just as important as the title.

Keep the files small – No one wants to see the high definition shots that you took with your 10 Megapixel Nikon D200. Do not bring high definition pictures to a low definition media. Make sure that the images are compressed so that they can load quickly.

Bigger can be better – tiny pictures are a dime a dozen. If your shots are a little bigger, they might attract a little more attention. You do not need to destroy the aesthetics of your site to this end. Pick the biggest size that makes a good fit.

Link to page not to file – If you are earning ad revenue this is very important. If you have a ton of thumbnails that people can view, make sure that they link to page. This will keep your ads showing.

Photo optimization is relatively simple but can take a long time to incorporate if your site has been made without optimization. If you have any questions relating to this or any other SEO topic, please contact us.

I didn’t realize it, but I guess Picasa wasn’t indexed by the search engine that owns it. Now it will be.

I highly recommend you uploading your photos to Flickr and Picasa. The former is owned by Yahoo! and Picasa is owned by Google. That means your photos stand a much better chance of being indexed by at least one search engine if you create accounts and upload photos at both photo sharing sites.

Of course, Flickr is the more popular of the two and photos uploaded at Flickr have always done well in the search engines. I expect that photos uploaded to Picasa will start doing well as well. I also expect that Google’s algorithms will favor Picasa over Flickr. Because of Google Universal, still in beta, you can bet that photos on Picasa will start showing up in search results at Google. You’ll have to be sure to make your images public, otherwise they won’t be searchable.

(Source) Ah, Microsoft. Always late to the game. Maybe it’s a part of their strategy: wait until Google (Picasa Web Albums) and Yahoo (Flickr) establish solid market positions, and then develop or buy an (usually inferior) product of their own and try to corner those remaining 10% of users.

It’s difficult to disagree with that analysis when MicroSoft routinely shows up late for its own party. You would have thought that the way Internet Explorer beat the socks off of Netscape Communicator back in the 1990s that MicroSoft would have emerged as a major player in the Internet game. Not so. MicroSoft is struggling as a mere minor player and they have no one to blame but themselves.

This latest move will certainly do nothing but help Google and Yahoo (Picasa and Flickr). Not many people had even heard of WebFives before news broke that MicroSoft was purchasing the rights to the technology behind the photo sharing site. Now, they likely never will. MicroSoft has a way of rolling out new technology too slow for it to matter. When they do finally get it rolled out it isn’t nearly as good as what’s already on the market.

But WebFives was out there. Now they won’t be. At least until MicroSoft gets it incorporated into its own search engine MSN Live Search. Meanwhile, WebFives users will likely migrate to Flickr and Picasa. My bet is that Flickr will get the majority of them, if they haven’t already. Either way, those folks sharing their photos who are looking for links and SEO for their efforts might find it, but it won’t be easy. Your best bet is probably to host them on your own server in a folder on your website dedicated solely to photos.