Jan/100
Optimizing your images for Google Image Search
Last year at Search Market Expo West, Peter Linsley from Google Image Search outlined how publishers can improve their ability to get images indexed by Google and other major search engines.
We've mentioned a few of the tips in a previous post like learning how to use alt tags and using plenty of descriptive text. Linsley covers the basics and more and breaks down image search behavior, which is very different from web search.
If you think about the paradigm when they do a query, it's not so much about what's the first result... users can consume images in a heartbeat, and if the image they happen to like is at the bottom left-and corner or the bottom right-hand corner, so be it. They'll see that, there's something about the image that attracts them, and they'll click through.
Since image searches are very subjective, there is no way for search engines to figure out what you are looking for. Sometimes users aren't just looking for a specific image but use the image search function as a tool for inspiration, research, and "sometimes they just use it to kill time, just for the fun of it."
I really enjoyed reading Linsley's best practices which include asking yourself how to make your images useful for users.
It's really about immersing the user into a very image-centric experience. These are the kinds of landing pages, these are the kind of images we've observed that our users tend to like.
For more tips keep reading here
