An Ultimate SEO Guide for Images
If you have your own website, then you must have already acquired a good deal of SEO skills for your images. In case you are looking for optimizing SEO for your pictures further then here is an ultimate guide for you to optimize JPEG for the web and also to make an SEO friendly image portfolio for the site.
1. Image Sitemaps
A tactic that is not often used is generating an Image Sitemap which will list the entire images on the site, in a neat, XML format. The process is quite simplistic in nature and updates for search engine algorithms in future will take this process into account increasingly. New image sitemaps can be added to the current sitemap.
2. Giving Credit
Always provide a link which goes back to the owner of an image whenever you post images which are not yours or owned by someone close to you. Make sure that it is a ‘do follow’ and not a ‘no follow’. This is a very good and safe practise which is also followed by search giants Google. The image search results will be happy that you did it and it will also save you from any kind of trouble from the duped image owners.
3. Rich Snippets
Rich Snippets which contain photos are really cool. If you run a business online, then find a solo image which represents you in the best possible way. This will not only lower the bounce rates of your site but also increase the click through rates, all the while helping the focal image to rank better.
4. Backlinking to Images
This works similar to the average ‘on page’ or ‘off page’ SEO backlinking. All you have to do is try linking to the images on your own site from within using descriptive, long tailed keywords. In case you can obtain other high on PR websites for linking back to specific images, then that’s great too.
5. EXIF Data
The EXIF data usually contains pre compiled information, which are created by the devices you use for taking pictures. The data is always embedded in the picture. But you can also alter this data to make it contain your preferred keywords, including the name of your site or any other required information. The quantity of detailing that this contains is amazing.
6. Captions
If you can provide captions for all the images which you put up on your site, then it will help improve your bounce rates by a great deal, which in turn will also affect your rankings in a very positive way. While this process has no scientific or empiricist backing, yet it is common knowledge that images come alive with captions.
