The Art of SEO, 2nd Edition

Optimizing for Image Search

Optimizing for image search can be a smart strategy for many search marketers. Even if you’re working on a site that you don’t feel truly lends itself to an image optimization strategy, you may be able to leverage images or photos on your website for SEO.

However, we should note that for some sites, there may not be a lot to gain here. Some e-tailers report poor conversion on image search traffic, and lots of the people coming in appear to be focused on stealing their images. You need to weigh the benefit of image search capability against the costs and other opportunities for SEO on your site. Nonetheless, many sites do very well with image search, and image search optimization does not have to take much time.

A significant amount of traffic can come from image search, and the number of people competing effectively for that traffic is much lower than it is in general web search. Industries that don’t immediately seem to provide compelling subjects for images may enjoy greater potential in this area, because the competition might never clue in to the advantages of integrating images into their sites and into an overall search marketing strategy.

There are a few different ways that image search optimization can help to improve traffic and conversions for your site:

Subtle reputation management

Images of your products/services/facility assist consumers during the research phase of their shopping, and lend an implicit message of openness/forthrightness to your ...