But now it's even better. This revamp is the biggest in Google Image history, since its launch in 2001.

Google Director of Search Products Ben Ling at Google's search press event

Here are some of the big changes to the way images are displayed:

• The search results page is all images now, without the clutter of text and links.
• The thumbnails are bigger.
• There is continuous scrolling so you can see more images faster.
• Scrolling over a thumbnail now shows you the a link, the URL, and the image size.
• Clicking on a thumbnail brings you to a full-size version of the image with the image's original website in the background.

Another addition to Google Images is the new Image Search Ads. The image search results page has always had ads at the top, but now these ads will contain thumbnail images along with text. The ads will still be differentiated from organic search results with a different color background and a label of "Sponsored Link."

The screenshot below shows an example of these new, highly relevant ads on an image search for cars.

New Google Image Search ads with images

Right now these thumbnail ads are only available for the Google Image search page, but they will probably come to other Google search pages in the future.

We think Google's Image Search Ads are a great way for advertisers to connect people to their brand through the power of images, just like our own In-Image ads. What do you think of the new Google Images?

There are two main types of SEO. On-page SEO involves editing elements on your website to make it more searchable, and off-page SEO involves increasing inbound links to your website. Here are some tips for both types that will get your site to the top of the search engines:

On-Page SEO

• Keywords - Before you do anything else, determine the best keywords for your website. These aren't necessarily the words that describe your company best, but the words that consumers are most likely to use when they search for you. Enter your URL into Google's search-based keyword tool to see your optimum keywords.
• Page Titles - The title of each webpage is also the title of the search result for that page, so it needs to include relevant keywords. But be sure to keep it under 70 characters because anything after that won't fit in search results.
• Optimized URL - Like the title of the page, the URL should also allude to the page's content. If the URL is just a jumble of random letters and numbers, the search engine will have no way of categorizing the page.
• Tagging - Tag everything! Use alt tagging for every image, and tag every post on your blog. Use keywords that pertain to your business as a whole, as well as to the specific topic of the post.
• Internal Links - Whenever possible, link to other pages within your website. Make sure that every page links back to the homepage. If you reference another page or a prior post, link to that page.

"Your Link Here - SEO Comic" by Flickr user ByronShell

Off-Page SEO

• Links on Social Networking Sites - Link to your website as often as possible from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. If other people share or retweet your link, it increases the number of inbound links to your site. And search engines love inbound links.
• Website/Blog Directories - List your website on reputable and relevant directories. Technorati is a great directory for blogs. Other directories exist for all different website categories, like Idealist.org for nonprofit organizations.
• Guest Posts - With a guest blog post, you're always guaranteed a link to your blog from your guest's website, and every link counts!
• Anchor Text - Be sure that the anchor text (the text people click on to follow the link), as well as the text around the link, includes keywords.

Which SEO methods have worked best for you? Do you spend a lot of time on SEO for your site?

Reminder: As important as SEO is, content should still be your chief concern. Once more people start visiting your website, you want them to like what they see so they keep coming back!

Photo by Carlos Zaragoza via stock.xchg

In light of this, we'd like to help publishers like you demystify these terms so you can make the best advertising revenue decisions for your blog. Here are some of the most commonly used terms in online marketing:

Affiliate Marketing. Affiliate marketing is a web-based revenue sharing practice between advertisers/merchants (affiliate merchants) and online publishers, whereby compensation is based on performance measures, typically in the form of sales, clicks, registrations, or a hybrid model. In a traditional affiliate network the merchant usually has a direct relationship with the publisher.

CPA -- cost-per-action. Also known as pay for performance, CPA is an effective way for merchants to select how they want to pay for their advertising -- by click, impression, sale or other variable. Like traditional affiliate marketing, CPA payouts are based on cost-per-action, where you get paid for leads you generate to their site that perform a specific action.

In a CPA network, the merchant communicates to publishers through the network and does not have direct contact with their affiliates. They also tend to have very transparent metrics with extensive lists of CPCs for search terms.

CPC -- cost-per-click. CPC programs are mostly successful in content-rich websites and blogs. The model is based on the amount of money an advertiser pays search engines and other Internet publishers for a single click on its advertisements that brings one one visitor to its website.

CPC and CPM advertising is typically viewed as being about brand awareness. Brand conscious advertisers only interested in getting exposure will pay a high profile publisher for impressions or clicks with little regard for their return or investment.

CPM -- cost-per-thousand-impression. An impression is a single instance of an ad appearing on a website. In CPM ad networks, advertisers pay for the amount of traffic that simply view a web page with an advertisement or a pop-up or pop under ad. While CPM does not pay as well as other types of monetization strategies it fits large publishers needs quite well. If you're running a highly trafficked site, the bulk of impressions can easily translate low-paying CPM ads into a profitable revenue stream.

PPC -- pay-per-click, Also known as, pay-per lead or pay-per-sale. PPC implements the affiliate model, offering financial incentives (in the form of a percentage of revenue) to affiliated partner sites.

Have any other online marketing terms that need explaining? Let us know in the comments!

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