How to optimize Images and Increase Blog Traffic

Google Image search is used widely for finding quality reference images, icons or photos. A great percentage of our blog traffic depends on Image search. When we are downloading images, most of the time they are saved with odd names and we don't take any interest in modifying the name. So we should always consider two things when uploading images on our blog - the proper use of the alt tag and changing the name of our images or pictures with the proper keyword.

1. Change Image Name with Keyword

When we are downloading images from the internet, generally they are saved in local drive with some very odd names like untitled.png, img.png etc. So changing these names with appropriate keywords is always helpful. For instance, if I want to add img or untitled in this post, then I would definitely change these name with those words - or keywords - that would describe the best my content; thus, if I want to add an image to a post about seo topics, then I would name it something like SEO.png or optimize-image.png so that it would be relevant to the post content.

2. Use alt attribute

Search robots cannot read multimedia, be it graphic images or flash. An image is meaningless for search spiders if it is not defined (tagged). Therefore, in order to tell the search robots what the image is about, we can add an alt tag to our image code - when we upload a photo inside the post editor, click on the image and below it, click on the Properties link:

After clicking on the Properties link, the Image properties box will popup. Inside the Title text section, type a relevant title for your image and below, and in the Alt text section, type a short description of your image... then press OK.

It is recommended to write short sentences to describe your pics and to keep the description limited to 4-5 words. Less is better. Also, make sure you don't use the same words, try to mix up your image keywords.

These are simple tips for SEO image optimization which are not only effective for your SEO but can also boost your traffic. If you are wondering how to get images for your blog, please read this tutorial: How to upload images and get the url of your pics