Image Search Optimization

The complete ways how to increase the visibility of images in your website on image search results.

The first Complete Image Search Optimization in the Web.

Name

Named the file of your image like image-name.jpg, no any capital letter, only allow small letter, number, and no other characters like .,'?!. Do not randomized the file name because it will become its image name. So, image-name.jpg is better than ImageName.jpg, and much better than abc123.jpg.

Category

If the URL of your image have a folder name, (or directory name) and if it's possible to change, named it with category/image-name.jpg, named the folder as its category.

Description

Do not forget to fill up the alt tag in the HTML of your image on web page as the short description of image. For example, in the image's HTML, alt="Short Description" and don't put a double quotation mark " in there. Remember it's better to leave 1 word in alt tag than to leave it blank because that is the most important to those "image search bots" on the web to track your image detail.

Pixels

The image search engines on the web looks for images that 300px wide above, and 300px high above, higher image pixels than those is good but lower than those was not.

Size

If the size of a 300x300 px (above) image is 25.0 kB, it's look like still have a good quality but if it size is below 15.0 kB, it's a bad quality to a 300x300 px (above) image. "Image search bot" looks for a good quality images to satisfy their searchers. High sized images is good for "image search bot" but it will cause to slow the loading of your web page. So, make your image size good enough.

Text Around

Put a sentences around the image that described it. It is also needed on Image Search Optimization. (the smallest section of this post but the complete I.S.O. would not be completed without this section)

Crop the Copied

If you copied the image of other web page, the image you copied should be cropped to have a different pixels and size than the original because when the "image search bot" tracked your copied image with the same picture, pixels, and size to the indexed original image on their database, they will not show them on their results. Remember lot of images on the web is copyrighted, so, if you have no permission to copy it, just put a link of the web page where the original image was as a source close to copied image at your web page, and to "open in new tab" the source' link put a target="_blank" in HTML of the source' link for your visitors would not leave your web page.

Accessible

Just make sure that the web page where your image was is fully accessible by web crawlers, if not, you can submit the web page where the image was to "Add your URL to Google", Yahoo! Search Submission, and Bing URL Submission or link the web page where the image was to the web page you knew that accessible by web crawlers like popular websites. Or try to use a web services like Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo! Site Explorer, or Bing Webmaster Tools but remember it's not easy to use those kind of services.

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Prioritize

1. Accessible - To find your image by "image search bot".
2. alt Tag - The most important of all.
3. Pixels - "Image search bot" looks for 300x300 px above.
4. Size - "Image search bot" looks for good to high quality images.
5. File Name - It will help to track your image.
6. Folder Name - Category of your image.
7. Crop the Copied - To avoid duplicating in image search crawler's database, don't forget to link the source.
8. Text Around - Some "image search bot" look at the text around the image.