A question was asked today at IzeaFest during the “Tools & Plugins” panel. After one of the panelists told everyone his biggest referrals come from Google Images, they were all asking how to optimize their images for the search engines.

It’s a great question and one that I’ve not seen many people give an answer for.

When we’re talking about optimizing your images we aren’t talking about anything rocket science. In fact, it’s much easier to do with images than it is with your whole blog or website in general.

The first thing you want to do to optimize your images to include text that describes what your image shows (this also helps for users who don’t have an image capable browser or has images turned off in their browser. It is also good for those visiting your site with a mobile phone. I personally think you should create a whole new theme or css style sheet for your blog or website for viewing on mobile phones, but if you don’t this is a great alternative method.

Now you’re asking me, “How do I add text to my image that describes it?” There are two methods:

1. The Alt Attribute

The alt attribute works by adding the following line of code within the “<” & “>” signs of your html image code: alt=”description here”. The alt attribute is weighed heavier in the search engines than the Title attribute (which I’ll speak of shortly). It is supposed to be the alternative text for that image. It shows as a tooltip in Netscape and Internet Explorer.

2. The Title Attribute

The title attribute works in exactly the same way that the alt attribute does, and is written as: title=”description here”. The title attribute isn’t weighed as heavily in the search engines, but should be used. The title attribute is just as it says, The Title of the image. It is displayed as a tooltip in Firefox and other newer xhtml compliant browsers.

This is all that’s necessary in order to optimize your images for search engines. There is however another (added) thing you can do that most people never talk about. And that’s your use of the FREE Google Webmaster’s Tools.

The Google Webmasters Tools helps you to better understand what keywords people are using to find your website or blog in Google Search, as well as analyze your robots.txt file, and many more things.

The part of Google Webmaster Tools we are going to talk about is function called “Enhanced Image Search”. In my opinion this is a great tool for better indexing of your images within the Google Image Search listings.

In order to enable this feature for your website, you first have to create a Google Webmaster Tools account, add your website, and verify that it is really you who owns it. This is a fairly easy process and you can do it easily by uploaded a simple blank html file to your server.

Once you have completed the steps necessary to let Google know your the actual website owner, you can enable the Enhanced Image Search by doing the following:

Sign into Google Webmaster Tools with your Google Account.
Click the URL for the site you want.
Click Tools, and then select Enhanced image search.

Once you have opted in to enhanced image search, you can opt out at any time by returning to this page and clearing the checkbox.

That’s all there is to it. Simple stuff!

I’ve got hundreds of images already in my blog, how do I go through and easily optimize those for the search engines?

A simple way to optimize your existing images and even your future images (if you’re using wordpress) is to download the SEO Friendly Images wordpress plugin. The best explanation of this plugin comes directly from the plugin dowload page:

“SEO Friendly Images is a Wordpress optimization plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according the options you set.”

You can’t get any easier than that.

I’d like to hear your opinion of the Title vs. Alt Attribute tags.

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