Last week I did a simple test on an old post that I wrote titled: My 4th of July Festivities in Myrtle Beach, SC. What are you doing?!? In the article, I shared a few photos that I took of me grilling out some steaks to celebrate the holiday with the in-laws. For fun, I edited this post & decided I would label my photos "Best Steaks in Myrtle Beach" I did this on purpose to prove a point.
In my post, that phrase is used nowhere other than just the labeling of my pictures. Today, I ran a google image search to see where my photos ranked. I wasn't really surprised to find them in the #1 & 2 spaces on Google. I know what many of you are thinking, "Who Cares if your photos rank high in google image search?" Well, if you haven't paid attention to this before, you may want to now, because there is a tremendous amount of Google Juice involved. When google searches your site, they are no longer just looking at the text comments. They are also reading your images & any text associated with the image to help categorize the web page.
Peter Linsley, who is a product manager for Google Images did a great video on google images search. He explains why images are important to SEO & also why consumers are using image search. The video gets very technical & geeky, so I will warn you ahead of time. Nevertheless, it has a few good points.
Two Reasons to Appeal to Google Image Search for Consumers.
1. Images have a very broad exposure. By labeling your photos properly, you are increasing your exposure tremendously. In the example above, if I was searching for the best steaks in Myrtle Beach, I would use the regular Google search, but I would also look at the images to see actual photos of the steaks. I am very much a visual person, so I want to actually see the results instead of just reading about it.
Before you say it, let me extinguish this complaint: "But this has nothing to do with real estate, so who cares?" You are correct, this doesn't have a thing to do with real estate. But, how many times do you visit a website from Google in search of one thing & end up noticing something else? Think with the Walmart Mentality. Also, when you are placing your actual real estate photos, you should be labeling them as well for the searches. Like stated before, it gives those using Google image search the ability to find you, & also helps increase your overall Google ranking.
2. People Search More than Just #1! When someone is doing an image search, they are going to look at more than just #1 on the list. In Fact, many times, they will search through several pages to find the photo that catches their eye. So even if you are not lucky enough to get your photo landed in the #1-5 spots, the importance of labeling the photos is still present because if you have the most visually appealing photo, the consumer will visit your page.
202 Billion photos Labeled img.
That is right! There are over 202 Billion images on Google that have never been labeled properly. That means there is such a huge amount of photographs out there that may be some of the most amazing pieces of art that nobody will ever be able to search. ActiveRain has made it very easy for you to label your photographs.
Under the Image URL box you will notice the Image Description & Title. You can set these to be whatever you wish. I normally make them both the same so that there is no question to the search engines or consumers what the photograph is supposed to represent. You want to make sure you fill in both boxes. The Image Description is what Google will read & associate with the photo. The title box is what consumers will read when they hover over the photo.
If you leave these fields empty, both Google & Consumers May not know what your pictures mean. Also the search engines cannot find you. Implementing this simple & easy step takes only a few extra seconds while writing your posts, but the benefits from it can be endless. So, if you have been contributing to the 202 million, it is time to stop & contribute some SEO to yourself!
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