Foreword: If you find that your website does not adhere to the basic guidelines below, your website is unlikely to be performing well within the search engines. If this is the case please contact us to find out what we can do for you.
Our website systems automatically generate the best elements to optimise any page across the search engines.
Image Optimisation
Images may seem like a straightforward component of your site, but you can optimise your use of them. All images can have a distinct filename and "alt" attribute, both of which you should take advantage of.
Image "alt" Text
The "alt" attribute allows you to specify alternative text for the image if it cannot be displayed for some reason.
If a user is viewing your site on a browser that doesn't support images, or is using alternative technologies, such as a screen reader, the contents of the alt attribute provide information about the picture.
Simply put, a search engine cannot see an image, so instead the image requires the alt attribute.
Another reason is that if you're using an image as a link, the alt text for that image will be treated similarly to the anchor text of a text link. However, we don't recommend using too many images for links in your site's navigation when text links could serve the same purpose.
Optimising your image filenames and alt text makes it easier for image search projects like Google Image Search to better understand your images.
Image "title" Text
The Title Tag is recognised by browsers such as Firefox and will be displayed when you place your mouse over an image.
Image Folder Name
The folder name can also be a factor in ranking the image, as with html pages. Typically, you would create a subdirectory in your main htdocs folder called "/images" and store all your images in there. However, if you have several images on your site, and you want to optimise them, it's better to organise them accordingly.
If for example your site sold computer hardware, then you might want to separate the image folders accordingly. Your folder paths for images might include "/images/printers/", "/images/hard-drives/" and "/images/RAM/".
Not only does this help your ranking in image searches, it also is more accessible by people who use screen readers, for example a blind person.
Guidelines:
• Use brief, but descriptive filenames and alt text. Like many of the other parts of the page targeted for optimisation, filenames and alt text (for ASCII languages) are best when they're short, but descriptive.
• Avoid using generic filenames like "image1.jpg", "pic.gif", "1.jpg" when possible
• Try not to write extremely lengthy filenames
• Do not stuff loads of keywords into alt text or copying and pasting entire sentences
• Supply alt text when using images as links.
• Avoid using only image links for your site's navigation.
• Try to split your images into keyword related folders.
• Make use of the image Title Tag.
• Do not have multiple images on one page with the same, or almost identical alt attribute, as this will be regarded as spamming.
