Image search is a much underutilized SEO technique that you should consider if you are developing a website, especially in a competitive area. Image search has become integrated into the top three search engines and images are presented at the top of a search results page even if the user did not specify an image search. The traffic from that kind of visibility combined with traffic from specific image searches can add to the number of visitors to your website.
Images in search engine results
Lets take “horse” as an example search term. Searching for this term in Yahoo, MSN and Google returns images of horses at the top of the results page. Being on the first page of search results is a coveted position bringing in the most traffic. People pay to appear on “sponsored links” on the first page of search results. With images, your website may appear there for free.
In Google, a search for “horse” returns 4 images at the top of the search results page. Not one of the websites that have these images appear in the rest of the search results on the first page. It is only because of these images that these websites appear on this first page of search results.
Optimal use of images
- Use keyword in alt tag. For example alt=”arabian horse, baskghazi, english pleasure, park horse”
- Text near or around the image should contain the keyword
- The webpage where the image appears should be about the keyword
- Internally link to that page with the keyword
- Anchor text containing keyword
Here is an example from the first image that appeared on the search results. Note that your search results may differ depending on geographical location or search engine changes.
<a href=horsebab.htm><img src=horse-beach.jpg width=1024 height=768 alt=”photo of horse galloping on beach”>
Drive more traffic to your website with images
So careful use of images can help increase traffic to your website and gain you visibility even in competitive areas. Make sure that the images are visually pleasing because an ugly image appearing at the top of search results is not going to bring the click through rate and traffic you could get with an attractive image.
Using images on mini-sites
Use of images on mini-sites can also help drive traffic and sometimes attract links. In this case you may want to include the keyword but also more long tail combinations where you may be more competitive. Two or three word long tail phrases can work well.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Very true, you mention a solid technique for increasing traffic to a site. One thing I would mention though is that depending upon the niche your site is in you should be very careful about using images in some niches just because it may cheapen your brand or drive a lot of untargeted visitors to your site that will never convert (into a sale, signup, adsense click, etc.).
Funny you make a post about this. About a month ago i made a post on my blog about “Hotties and the Internet”. Basically use of hot women in marketing and how it can affect what people buy and not buy. Well the pictures i used bring a TON of traffic to the site. Considering it is not targeted and only there for the pictures i had to do something about this. I couldn’t let the traffic go to waste. So i monetized the ONE POST for that specific niche.
Sounds crazy but i was getting useless traffic that did nothing but use bandwidth. I found a way to target the visitors and i am making a killing off the one post. Bringing in about $10 a day from it. Not bad since it was non-intentional.
Ross,
Nice story. Glad you were able to find a way to make some money. Photos like that which aren’t very targeted take work to convert.
You just have to be careful which images you choose and how you tag them. They should compliment the topic and be relevant and they should bring in new targeted traffic.
I am very interested in examining Ross’s success with http://ygrab.com/bottom-line/hotties-and-the-internet/ further.
First of all it seems that none of the photos of women have alternate text, nor do they have key word rich names (post-1-1124066514.jpg is the name of the Raven Riley shot). This leads me to assume that these images are not showing up in images searches, and that the post text must be generating the traffic. It also means that Ross may be able to increase the income further by following some of the tips in Barry’s post. Or have I missed something is the way the code is written?
Second, Ross ranks first for the term “Hotties and the Internet” and eighth for “internet hotties.” According to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal the first term gets negligible traffic and the second term 260 searches per month. My initial thought was that I don’t think that is sufficient traffic to generate $10 a day so the traffic must be coming from elsewhere.
Using the SEO for Firefox plugin (tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html) to look at the other keywords that might be bringing traffic, “male customers” “picture woman” and “pervs image see” might be I guess, but again they don’t seem to be massive traffic magnets.
Looking at the page itself, in my opinion the way it is optimized with Clicksor ads is very effective. Some might say it is a bit intrusive with the pop-ups and ad-links in keywords, but it works. So taking this conversion optimization into account perhaps Ross could be making that $10 a day off less than 50 visitors per day. Any comments anyone/other theories? An alternative is that the keyword stats are unreliable.
I also noted that Ross’s authority for the page largely comes from Bido.com. http://ygrab.com itself is PR2, which wouldn’t give a leading edge on many terms outright, but I think that the keyword rich backlinks to http://ygrab.com/bottom-line/hotties-and-the-internet/ are helping – 32 of these backlinks come from Ross’s useful comments on http://www.bido.com If you take a look at http://www.backlinkwatch.com it will lead you to Bido pages where Ross has keyword rich links on the “My Feed” page. So that is 30+ backlinks from a single PR4 – when dealing with an uncompetitive term such as “Hotties and the Internet” this example seems to demonstrate that this is sufficient.
I’d be interested to hear more from Ross, or anyone else interest in SEO.
OK, I visited the site and I have to tell you I would never return again. The intrusive ads and blasting sounds and affiliate timed redirects .. its a mine field.
If you want to make a buck off a visitor once, then it will probably be effective but no one would return to the site again after that experience.
So it depends on your goal. I think because it lives within a relatively sedate and normal site, it probably gains from its “neighborhood” but a site with a good proportion of those pages can’t remain indexed well for long. The visitor would click back and look for another search result and those bounces are going to cause a fall in ranking.
Others are saying that article marketing can help increase site traffic. This is true, and there is one other way that can increase site traffic and this is through the use of images. This is not a popular way to increase traffic, but this works.