I sometimes create posts to share, and sometimes to test things out. One particular post I created a ways back was about the tattoo on my toes. This post in particular not only shared a bit of me, but it has turned out to be a really great litmus test for Google image search ranking. Granted, this is just one post and one image, but it has yielded some proof to the thought that naming your image with the keywords you want to rank for certainly helps increase your picture ranking in Google image search.
It happens that through the course of my day, I sometimes run into people that want to talk about my tattoos. It’s inevitable. When you’re sleeved, you’re a walking advertisement for tattoos and it always opens the doors for conversations about them. From time to time, the conversation goes to other tattoos I’ve gained over the years, and the tattoo on my toes always seems to be a really good conversation piece. There’s a really good story behind how it came about and why I decided to go through that type of pain. Aside from just loving the feeling of getting a tattoo, I think it looks really great given how jumpy I was while getting it done!
My body is a temple, and I’ll decorate it however I choose.
- Someone worthy of praise
Back to images and ranking them though…that’s why you’re really here, right?
While discussing projects with clients, friends and whomever I might be speaking to, the conversation sometimes turns to ranking and SEO, especially when talking with anyone interested in image galleries and photo sites. To drive my point home, I usually refer to my tattooed toes as an example of how image search can add value alongside the normal search that people usually do. People seem to forget that there is not only regular search that we’re all very familiar with, but also image search, which is used heavily by searchers as well. So what I tell people is to go to Google and do a search for “tattoo toes”. My toes are usually in position one or two.
Search results for "tattoo toes" on Google - I get an image, and a post! Double-whammy!
Hopping over to Image Search yields the following results, just look at all the pretty toes!
"tattoo toes" Google Image search results - Position 2 isn't bad at all
You can see that this image ranks pretty well for the term “tattoo toes”. I hovered over the image to show you how the file name is used in the image search too. This is one very good point as to why you should be naming your images appropriately. Google displays it for people, and it can help you get more traffic perhaps…but there’s another reason why I wanted to show you the file name.
By the way, yes, I’m ignoring the fact that there is a pair of hands in there. Seems someone has slipped by the guards with that image…
My picture dropped in rank
When doing a search recently, I noticed that the image had dropped in rank, pretty significantly too.
I was shocked! Surprised that Google would shun such an awesome “tattoo toes” image (if you ask me). It has done so well, why would it drop?
Why!?!
We all know that Google has updated their algorithms in the past few months, and I attribute the drop in position on those changes. Perhaps image name is now more important than it was before? I mean, it’s always been part of the SEO equation when talking about images and ranking, but perhaps with the recent updates they are now giving it even more weight in the overall equation.
If you look at all the images in the top 10, they all contain “tattoo” and “toes” in the file name, or some derivative of “toe” and “tattoo”, meaning Google also seems to understand that “toes” are found on a “foot” and the plural is “feet”. Or that “tattoos” are also called “tats”. That’s a whole ‘nuther topic actually, but you get what I’m talking about I’m sure. It doesn’t seem to have to be an exact keyword match…in the ball park seems to work fine too. However, I’m not sure that holds water for the first few positions. I’d suspect that Google favors exactness for the top positions.
My picture raised in rank
The old name I had for the image was something like “img_0345.jpg”. That’s not very friendly at all, right? I decided to update the post and replace the image with the same image named differently, which you can see above. Within a few days, it was back in the position it has enjoyed since posting that article. All is well with the world once again.
The key takeaway I want to leave you with is to never try to game the system and instead to work with it. Be genuine, and certainly name your files appropriately instead of using something that is completely unrelated to the image like I had initially. Also, accurately describe the image with keywords that you might want to strive for, but also help to describe the image well. Doing so, you will see better results from your efforts and more traffic.
Oh OK, here are a few more tips
- Always include the alt and title property on your image tag, and follow the same advice as I gave above. Keep it real, and concise.
- Using captions like the images above have are great ways to attract the readers eyes in addition to adding to the related text around an image. This is one of the biggest mistakes a blogger can make.
Just to see what happens…
And finally, just to see what effect this might have, here are my tattooed toes once again.
Tattooed Toes, painful, yet wonderful. Can you say Dos Equis? Stay single my friend.
Wayne John is a health coach for people that want to lose weight, gain weight, improve athletic performance, or simply maintain a healthy lifestyle. Wayne has lost over 55 pounds and improves his current health every day by using simple, straight-forward techniques that anyone can integrate into their lives to achieve the same. Contact Wayne today to realize your own health and fitness goals, or get started now by completing and submitting the free Wellness Profile. He also has been developing websites since 1995 and programming solutions for clients even longer. He'd rather be outside having fun in the sun though.
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You’re right Wayne, its very important to work on the images and I’m not going to forget your tattoo toes because I have to often work with images and by the way the tattoos are awesome. Google’s algorithm has also introduced some major changes alerting everyone.
Twitter: MelLifshitz
Optimizing photos for SEs is indeed very important. This post is well noted.
Your tests and my tests have given us the same results!
I think that,
The name of the image file (no “-” or spaces)
The alt text
The title
The caption (if your using wordpress)
are the main things that help you get ranked in google images.
Twitter: waynejohn
Nice to have a seconding on that, Danika. Cheers!
Twitter: w3blogdk
I can´t quite understand why you are against using “-” in the filenames?
The use of “-” in filenames has been done for god know how long in urls and on images, because it´s easier for users and search engines to read.
So why do you mean this i as bad thing.?
Twitter: SEOSEMAnalytics
well, we all agree that these factors are the most important ones for image ranking:
image name – containing keyword
alt – containing keyword
title – also containing keyword
the text around image
My question is: do the links to that specific image help? I mean linking to the image itself, not to the page that contains the image? I don’t know if this helps, but some say that it does. Did you test this?
Twitter: waynejohn
That is something I’m unsure of. to test, I guess an image that is not posted in a post, but instead simply linked to might give some indication if that is a factor or not.
Twitter: Yachtbookercom
I tested this and it also helps. I’m talking about placing backlinks directly to the images. I only placed keyword-rich anchor text backlinks to an image, without having it inside a paragraph and the name and alt had nothing to do with the keyword, it was something random. then I searched for the keyword inside the anchor text and i found the image… but anyway, having a keyword rich name and alt and being inside a pretty well optimized content is a must
Twitter: easyPblog
You clever boy.
Looks as though it’s all sorted.
Keith
I’ve always tried to keep my onsite SEO top notch and have got great rankings in Google images. But ultimately the visitors are just trying to leech images off your site and never see the actual page to provide any value.
Great advice Wayne, we have talked on this subject before and it works. I had one post where the image had 3 times more hits than the post itself. Although ideally the visitor should be tempted into checking the post out too which normally happens.
Twitter: waynejohn
Yeah, the ROI is questionable, I know. But if that leaks a bit more eyeballs to the content, I’d say it’s worth it. Especially if the image isn’t something that is the focus.
If the image IS the focus, then perhaps some would feel less inclined to to try to dress it up in SEO for the sake of thwarting those image-nappers.
Twitter: WebTrafficCafe
Correctly titling your images in a blog post might also help the overall SEO for the post, not just he image itself.
Great tips!
Ana
Twitter: waynejohn
Waterfall up?
Never thought about it that way. Thanks for sharing, Ana!
Wow this is an awesome tip for newbies like me John. I renamed the images on my blog after reading this post a few days ago and guess what? I received 50 visitors from google images on my blog today! wow
Twitter: waynejohn
Are those 50 NEW visitors? Great to hear that you are having success with this!
Yep 50 new visitors
Powerful trick you just shared Wayne!
Twitter: waynejohn
That is simply awesome. Honestly, I had no idea that it would work THAT well!
Twitter: c0achmcguirk
Great post Wayne, I love it when someone can use actual numbers for their SEO theories, rather than speculation.
You already mentioned the questionable click through rate, and I agree with you that more eyes on your site, the better. I’m wondering though, with the Panda update–if someone swipes your image and Google sees duplicate content–do you think your site could get Google slapped too?
Twitter: waynejohn
I want to believe that Google can tell who the original comes from. After all, it was found first on my site, right? So there’s a history there. But I think the real question is, does Google do image analysis to be able to determine copies of images? I know they can do it, but do they? That’s a lot of processing to perform.
Twitter: finallyfast
>>People seem to forget that there is not only regular search that we’re all very familiar with, but also image search, which is used heavily by searchers as well.
If I think about it, I can honestly say that I use Google Image Search upwards of 20 times a day. It’s almost like an unconscious reflex at this point to open Image Search when I want more information about something, like what something looks like that’s been described to me, what someone looks like who I’m communicating with online, etc.
Optimization of your images for Image Search is definitely underrated and under-considered, even by me, who is a regular user of the service.
The name for the images is really significant. You are right about being open to changes and we just have to adjust to the changes made by google that way we’ll encounter minimum problems.
Twitter: pc_prima
Are both sets of toes tattooed or just the one? Actually, I’m about to jump over to your post on your experience of getting it done, so that question might be answered very shortly. I don’t have any tattoos, but I’d venture to guess it must be one of the less pleasant areas of the body to get tattooed.
Just did a regular Google and Google image search and your toes are still in their rightful, number one position. How does it feel to have famous feet?
Twitter: waynejohn
Just the one set….for now.
That’s great to have a tattoo toe image ranking high on Google images! I totally agree with you that we need to name our images properly, and of course use appropriate alt and captions.
I better have a good try on it. It seems to me that we can use this to all the pictures we want to rank up. If we just take these advice. Your amazing Wayne.
Thanks, will use this awesome tip
Looks like I still have a lock on Beaver Friday. But it seems my traffic is falling off. I’ve been too busy to post much. I still don’t know how you keep up with all the changes. I barely learn one program or system and it changes overnight. Bought a cell phone about 3 months ago and now it’s an antique. Hey guys slow down a bit would you!
Twitter: waynejohn
Well, I’m knee deep in this stuff, so it’s just part of life for me. I’ve been dealing with constant change since I started over 20 years ago. It IS a bit tiring now though…I can barely keep up with all I’ve created and I’m trying my best to scale it back a bit. lol
Those toes of your are hilarious! I had no idea you were sleeved man. In regards to this post about appropriately naming pictures, I couldn’t agree with you more.
I recently have learned how powerful correctly named pictures can be to drive traffic. My wifes new blog gets about 70% of it’s traffic from pictures. This is starting to slowly shift from pic traffic to serp traffic but it defiantly got her on the radar in the beginning.
Thanks for the detailed info to confirm what I have suspected all along.
Twitter: WebLoverz
Thanks for sharing that tip…Usually bloggers neglect the importance of Pictures during SEO…But thats an important factor…
Twitter: sanjaykhemlani
I am already implementing this on my tutorial site, it also helps you grab some traffic. Thanks for the test man! Btw, cool tatoo!
It is very important that we name image appropriately for Google image search purposes. Name your images in a way that describes what they are. Don’t get carried away though. If it’s a picture of a red rose, name it red rose.jpg, rather than leaving it whatever your camera or photo editing software wants to name it. Helpful Hint: Use dashes between the words, rather than underscores;)
Twitter: blog2thebank
Another cool tip I found is to make sure your keyword is in the alt tag for all images in your posts. So, if you’re trying to rank for a keyword in the title of your post, make sure the keyword is in the image name, description and alt tag. You also want to make sure you add in the “rel nofollow” tag for that image.
Twitter: w3blogdk
Naming images with keywords, without stuffing is a must on any blog if you want you blog found.
I´ve been doing it for a long time now, and some of the images are ranked at the top. So for me it works.!
Nice tat btw, how many do you have, so far I only have one.?
Twitter: waynejohn
Well, I’m sleeved at this point, and have a few random ones around the old body. Thinking of another one soon too.
If I had my way, I’d have a full kabuki suit, but I’m beyond that ability now.
Nice to meet ya Jimmy!
Twitter: manonthelam1
I really should more thought into my picture descriptions! Thanks for the tips!
Leaving default file names for images is such an easy thing to do but it’s also so obvious that a bit of extra effort is going to make a difference. It’s like naming all your website pages page-1.html, page-2.html etc…
Hi Wayne,
The tats on your toes are really cool.^^ You also remind me of that guy with tattoos all over his body from the book, The Lost Symbol. Anyway, I didn’t know that the actual image name now matters to search engines. Thanks for the info.
Twitter: larryphoto
As a photographer, I post a lot of images on my site. I’ve gotta admit, I get a little lazy on naming my images. Gotta start paying more attention to that, because I’m probably missing out on traffic.
I see that mistake all the time. Since I have learned about the importance of images, I always use a keyword to name the image file, I use keyword also as alternative text and use another related keyword in image title.
Another thing I do now, is to add at least one image in each post. And that has been working fantastically for me when it comes to ranking those posts.
Twitter: CheekyBabySling
I bet you rank for “kabuki suit” before long.
I had a question on getting images to rank on Google. Should I bother photoshopping my url in the bottom right corner of each product photo from my store? I know they are already getting swiped and used on junk sites. Is it worth it? I thought I might get some type in traffic that way.
Twitter: sticky_business
Nice toes, Wayne.
I’ve been re-doing our site over the last few weeks and was stunned at how many great images were completely mislabeled.
And since I’m now writing for my customers rather than the search engines (seems obvay, but heck – it’s an easy thing to forget sometimes) I’m getting “real” about the pictures too.
Do numbers in the image name affect SEO? For example, will tattoo-toes1.jpg rank as well tattoo-toes.jpg? Assume all the image, file size, SEO, and all other factors are identical except for the image name.
Twitter: zahlmzahlm
Great discussion, thanks for all of the excellent tips. Tuning my pics is something that I will start doing today. Has anyone tested conversions from image search traffic?
One point that was brought up was that most of the people searching for images are just looking for images to download and it may not be the best quality traffic. I agree with this (but I could be wrong).
However, when I am doing a search on pictures for myself…this is what I notice. If the picture looks like what I am searching for, but it is too small, I usually end up closing the lightbox preview and checking out the page itself to see if there are any other similar pictures that are larger or better resolutions.
So something interesting to test would be to make all of the pictures on a page that you are specifically trying to rank for smaller than normal to get people to check out the page. Any thoughts?
Twitter: kathydobson
I love your toes! They would be a hit in Florida
And, thanks for the great info about naming images…
I had read that somewhere quite sometime ago but let it slip and fell back into old habits again.
Anyway we can bring traffic to our sites is a plus in my opinion and to be honest I often times use Google images when I search so not taking advantage of it for myself is simple silly.
Kathy
Twitter: rrelectricity
Well, I see that I need to comb my site and each image for the correct tags now! Thanks for the heads up.
This tiny tips did wonders to me man. just awesome tip i must agree. My images a ranking well. Thats nice.
What I’ve found helps most is to include the keyword in the filename, alt tag, title tag, and a caption below the picture. Relevance is a big deal too so a page about it containing the picture is good also.
Stumbling across this post was so well-timed for me, you have no idea — I was just wondering whether adding captions is a good thing at all or whether it would just distract readers. And I was also doubting whether it really makes any difference to name your image file something keyword related or not.
You’ve convinced me on both counts that it’s worth doing this right! Also, I love the ‘human interest’ bit with your tattooed toes.
Twitter: waynejohn
Captions are said to draw the eyes of readers, so maybe you could use them to help enforce an idea, subtly of course.
Keeping he caption on topic and relevant is important. I’d do a search or hit ProBlogger, I think I remember Darren writing a really good article on page layouts with a heatmap of where the eyes tend to flow, captions being one of those places.
Great advice here Wayne and those toes are something else
Twitter: waynejohn
ha, thanks!
It never occured to me that you might get traffic from google images, but why not? Makese perfect sense – great tip, I’m going to put it to use immediately in my blogs.