Image and ALT tag optimization is something you must do on every website.

Have you ever hovered over an image on a website and a small title appears describing the image?  Have you ever done a search in Google for a particular image?  Chances are, you’ve experienced both of these scenarios.

The reason you see the image title and the reason these images are found in search engines is directly related to your image and alt tag optimization.  Although optimizing images for websites is not the most important factor to get higher SERP (search engine results page) rankings, it is still very important.  The more you do to increase your rankings, the better.  Right?

Let’s take a step by step approach to inserting and optimizing images on your website.

Step One:

Naming your image. Make sure you name your image appropriately. This helps you understand what image you are using, and makes them easily recognizable. Using an image name like .image123 doesn’t help. Name it something like “flying side kick”, for example.

Here’s our image code so far:

img src=”image-files/example-image.jpg” alt=”" /

Step Two:

Now let’s take a look at the image title.  Using this in your images is important for those that hover over your image. When the users mouse passes over the image, they will see a title describing the image or any other message you put in there. You can use this feature to highlight a product, make a point, etc.

Here’s our image code so far:

img title=”Example Title” src=”image-files/example-image.jpg” alt=”" /

Step Three:

Now let’s take a look at another important part of the image description, the width and height. Ensuring that you add the image width and height, will help your browser load the images faster, which increases user satisfaction. And there is no doubt that user satisfaction is important. To do this add:

Here’s our image code so far:

img title=”Example Title” src=”image-files/example-image.jpg” alt=”" width=”250″ height=”250″ /

Step Four:

With the title, width, and height set you are moving along fine. But let’s not forget the ever important alt tag. The alt tag is what the search engines use to “see” the image. Since they cannot actually view the image, they need text to understand what it is. This alt tag is also used for web readers that are visually impaired. When you add your alt tag, make sure you use keywords that are relative to the page content. Do not “overstuff” your alt tag with keywords, as this can be seen as spam. Keep it simple and relevant to the website and that individual page’s content. Also, make sure the alt tag is in sentence form, not keywords seperated by commas. Looking at the code now, we get:

Here’s our image code so far:

img title=”Example Title” src=”image-files/example-image.jpg” alt=”example keyword sentance”

And this should wrap up omptimizing your image for the web. Let’s recap:

1. Name your image appropriately.
2. Add your image title, and make it appropriate.
3. Add the image height and width.
4. Use a keyword rich, short sentance in your alt tag.

You can do many more things with images such as adding borders, centering them, aligning them left or right, making rollover images, etc. For now, we are only covering optimizing your image and alt tags for search engines to help you get better rankings.

In my next post I’m going to cover the importance of using headlines on your webpages. Often, this aspect is overlooked, and often underrated.