Written on March 12th, 2005 at 07:03 am by Darren Rowse
Formatting images for SEO
One of the most commonly known Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips that go around has to do with the way you name and tag the images that you use on your site. Its fairly commonly accepted by most SEO experts that Google not only looks at the text on your blog in order to measure its worth but that Google’s spidering bots also take a look at the code you use in your image files.
Over the years SEO techniques have been developed to abuse this fact and webmasters have ’stuffed’ their ‘alt tags’ with all kinds of keywords - however Google has found ways to combat this and treats such strategies as spamming their bots now - however it is still legitimate to put keywords in you image tags and I would recommend that you do (within reason).
If I’m writing on one of my technical blogs about a product and want to post a picture - I always make sure that the file name of the picture includes the name of the product (with-hyphens-between-words). The system I use (ecto) to publish my blog uploads photos automatically to set the file name as the ‘alt tags’ (which are the words that come up as your picture loads) and uploads the picture to its own URL with the file name in the actual URL. This ensures that when Google’s bot spiders through your site it sees your keywords an additional few times per picture.
For those that have no idea how to write an Alt Tag into your image - it will usually look something like this
<img src=”http://secure.cre8dserver.com/~enternetusers.net/wp-images/darren-rowse.jpg” alt=“these are the keywords I’m targeting” width=”75″ height=”100″/>
One last warning - don’t stuff your Alt Tags full of keywords - especially ones that don’t relate to the rest of your page as they run the risk of being seen as spam.
22 Responses to “Formatting images for SEO”
Michelle
March 12th, 2005 9:04 am
Any discernible difference between using hyphens and underscores?
Rick
March 12th, 2005 9:07 am
Do you know of any differences between alt tags and title tags?
BobbyMasteria
March 12th, 2005 10:49 am
Underscore isn’t a word separator, that is to say : professional_blogger = professionalblogger which means nothing.
On the contrary : professional-blogger = professional blogger.
I don’t think the title attribute of the img tag is ignored, it might even have priority as it is the case for hyperlinks.
Tim
March 12th, 2005 11:18 am
Hyphens are better for SEO purposes.
Darren
March 12th, 2005 11:37 am
Michelle - there is debate over the underscore/hyphen thing but I think most people say that hyphens are best - thats what I tend to use these days.
I guess no one really knows what is weighted as what…. but I tend to try to cover all bases where its not too much trouble to do so
Michelle
March 13th, 2005 4:13 am
Thanks guys; I’ll try switching to hyphens. Can’t hurt.
Andrew Hume
March 14th, 2005 7:14 am
Where on earth does the expression ‘alt tag’ come from when it’s quite plainly an ‘alt attribute’?
Anyone have any ideas about this?
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SEOguy
September 28th, 2005 10:30 pm
I just cummed all over myself.
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September 28th, 2005 10:38 pm
charming
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Harvey
April 11th, 2007 10:50 pm
Please put me right here. I thought an alt image tag was a metatag and that Google bots don’t read metatags. Happy to be wrong on this?
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Asha
June 7th, 2007 4:59 am
Yes, even I have been practising this Alt tag for image since last 3 years and it shows results.
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indobloger
August 23rd, 2007 7:18 pm
This is new knowledge for me. thanks for the tips. next time i’ll try to write it in my own language.
NutritionOcular
August 27th, 2007 1:12 pm
I have heard of naming your images with keywords as well. Using alt tags is a good idea, thanks.
Trond
September 20th, 2007 10:37 pm
Use your-best-product.gif and ALT tag’s on all images.
This will give google some extra breadcrumbs.. And makes you a better pagestrength..
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