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How To: Optimize Your Wine Images for Search
Have you every gone to Google image
search looking for a quick photo, image or wine label?
Image search is an area often overlooked when first dipping
your toes into the world of search engine marketing.
Remember, search engine bots are a series of algorithms
and routines that determine ranking and image search engines
are no different. But, you can't expect a bot to be as perceptive
as a human and identify what your keywords your wine images
should relate to.
So, give them a hand. Effectively labeling your wine (or
any) images and alt tags is a great start. But, do so within
reason. A few months ago we posted about the abuse of search
engines by black hat developers who used 'keyword stuffing'
on their meta tags to lessen the relevance of certain determination
factors such as meta tags - and it too has been done in
image tagging. This shouldn't thwart you from using images
as an effective means of SEO however - but do so within
reason and without keyword spamming.
Properties to understand about images.
Naming: When saving or selecting a filename
for your image, be sure to use something which is relevant
not only to the image description, but the overall keyword
theme for your specific site or page.
Do's:
Separate words with hyphens. Search engines cannot decipher
where one word begins and another ends without an identifiable
delimiter such as a hyphen (-).
Example:
wine-marketer-logo.jpg not winemarketerlogo.jpg.
Don't:
Separate words with spaces or underscores when a hyphen
will do.
Example:
wine marketer.jpg will conver to wine%20marketer.jpg.
Alt Tags: Alt tags allow you to provide
a description of your image to visitors and search engines
for multiple purposes. First, the alt tag will show prior
to an image being displayed should it take a few seconds
to load and will give visitors a description of what is
loading (or even maybe pointing to a bad link). Second,
they provide a hover over effect on the image, allowing
visitors to see a description of images they place their
cursor on. Third, they display an image description for
browsers or users who are unable to load your site images
including those visually impaired. Lastly, and most importantly
for this article, they provide a description to search engines
of what this image is about. Pairing this with the selective
keywords on your site and image filename, it is another
opportunity to reinforce your search engine worthiness!
Here
is an example of SEO friendly image naming and alt tag
in HTML format:
<img src="images/wine-marketer-logo.jpg"
width="257" height="329" alt="Wine
Marketer - Wine Advertising and Marketing News">
Remember to use alt tags whenever possible as another
form of traffic allocation through image search and in helping
boost your organic search results by providing even more
keyword relevancy for your site.
Suprisingly Wine.com adheres to alt tag standards however
does not relate this into the their image filenames. All
the little things make a difference in SEO!
Cheers!
Mark
Spangler
Mark
is Vice President of ClassicWines.com,
Your Online Guide to Classic Wines and editor of WineMarketer.com.
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