Use Photos to Make Your Blog Show Up On Search Engines

Photo courtesy of Stock.chng

After the discussion of blog photos and how to keep from getting sued, I thought I'd mention one additional thing that can help bloggers who use photos. This tip has nothing to do with copyright, but helps the search engines to "see" the photos you upload. 

I learned this tip from Alexa, the site where you can have your blog analyzed for optimization. Just using a photo with the typical "DSCN66007.jpg" does not allow search engines like Google to "see" them. If you want your photos to help bring readers to your site, there are three things to do.

Rename. It's easy to rename a photo. Just like a file name, click on it to highlight the file name, and give it the name you want. But don't just describe the picture, give it a name that will mean something to the search engine. Think keywords. If it's a picture of a beach ball for your post on reading on the beach, you could call it "great beach reads"

Separate. Next, you'll separate the words of your photo label. Use either a dash or an underscore. For the beach ball example, you'd use "great-beach-reads" or "great_beach_reads".

Add. Lastly, you'll add the magic ingredient. I don't know why this works so well, but Alexa said to do it, and it has magical results. Add the letters "alt" to the end of your photo tag. So our examples above would end up looking like these: "great-beach-reads-alt.jpg" or "great_beach_reads-alt.jpg".

Somehow, doing these three simple things makes the photos you use visible to the search engines. Using Sitemeter, I've noticed that a huge amount of my blog traffic comes from Google images. That was not the case before I began renaming my photos. Some photos I've used appear in the first position on Google images. That increases the likelihood of someone ending up on my blog. Give it a try--it might work well for you, too.

Has anyone else tried this technique? I'd love to hear your experiences, and if you have other tips to share.