Two Tiny Tweaks - Triple the Traffic!

Posted by Laura Bergells

April 13, 2007

If you have yet to optimize your site for Image Search, do it now.

Big payoff.

Don’t wait.

I’m serious.

Here’s the hot, hot scoop: I optimized a small site for image search in mid-February. In November, December, and January, the site received between 2548-3283 visits per month from Google Image Search.

Not bad for a small site.

But after optimization, the Feb stats revealed 7446 visits from Google Image Search.

March? 8545.

And now, we are not even halfway through April, and over 11,483 visitors have come to the site for IMAGE search.

Vertical search is hot, hot, hot! It’s not just images. People are doing more vertical searches (blog searches, video searches, news searches, etc.) The site that I optimized for image search didn’t add a bunch of new content, either (other than about 20 or so blog posts during February to April).

All I did to help was make a few simple tweaks to content that was already on the site.

Basically, it comes down to implementing two tiny tweaks:

Make your image code standards compliant.
Tell Google about it.

So why not rapidly optimize for image search when it’s so outrageously easy to do? If you have photos or graphics at your site, you have just a tiny bit of work to do — and you stand to reap huge traffic rewards.

Here’s what to do, exactly:

Assign a pixel width and height declaration to each picture src attribute
Write an alt attribute that describes the image
Optional: Use a title attribute that describes the image
Turn on Enhanced Image Search in your Google Webmaster Tools. (see image below)

Now, the first three steps above may seem like gibberish to a non-techie type. But it’s easy. Just note the five bolded items above, and you’ll do fine. Essentially, here’s what the code looks like for the above graphic (bold added for emphasis)